Pervaporation Separation of Butanol-Water Mixtures Using Polydimethylsiloxane/Ceramic Composite Membrane

Abstract

Pervaporation has attracted considerable interest owing to its potential application in recovering biobutanol from biomass acetone-butanol-ethanol (ABE) fermentation broth. In this study, butanol was recovered from its aqueous solution using a polydimethylsiloxane (PDMS)/ceramic composite pervaporation membrane. The effects of operating temperature, feed concentration, feed flow rate and operating time on the membrane pervaporation performance were investigated. It was found that with the increase of temperature or butanol concentration in the feed, the total flux through the membrane increased while the separation factor decreased slightly. As the feed flow rate increased, the total flux increased gradually while the separation factor changed little. At 40 °C and 1% (by mass) butanol in the feed, the total flux and separation factor of the membrane reached 457.4 g•m −2 •h −1 and 26.1, respectively. The membrane with high flux is suitable for recovering butanol from ABE fermentation broth.

Surface-Engineered Inorganic Nanoporous Membranes for Vapor and Pervaporative Separations of Water–Ethanol Mixtures

“…In the case of separating ethanol–water solutions (such as a fermentation broth), ethanol-selective membranes that can extract ethanol out of the dilute solutions would be preferred and more efficient. Most of the hydrophobic membranes in the literature for ethanol pervaporation have so far considered materials such as zeolites/silicalite and their supported thin layers [27,28,29,30,31], polymers such as polydimethylsiloxane (PDMS) [32], polymer-zeolite hybrids [33,34,35], and polymer-inorganic mixed matrices [36,37,38,39]. Recently, some works have considered superhydrophobicity for membrane separations of ethanol–water mixtures [40,41].…”

Membranes with Favorable Chemical Materials for Pervaporation Process: A Review

“…Porous polymers such as polysulfone (PSf) are used widely in the ultra-filtration and nano-filtration [40,41], or polyvinyl alcohol (PVA), often used in the PV separation of water/alcohol mixtures. PVA is a hydrophilic polymer with a good chemical stability and low cost of manufacturing [42,43]. Since PVA show a tendency to swell in aqueous solution, therefore before use, it must be crosslinked.…”

Activated Carbon-Loaded Polydimethylsiloxane Membranes for the Pervaporation of 1-Butanol from Aqueous Solutions

“…This method is ideal to remove trace components from the feed solution 9 . The advantage of pervaporation over other techniques is the use of mild conditions, especially regarded to temperature and pH, which is very important to prevent cell death in fermentation broths 10 .…”

“…Since the organics are in low concentration in the medium, hydrophobic membranes are investigated to perform the separation, especially polydimethylsiloxane (PDMS) and poly(ether-block-amide), (PEBA) 5,8,[10][11][12][13] . Silicone rubber is among the best polymers to perform such separations, as it is known from the literature 8,[10][11][12][13] . Being a macromolecule in which the main chain is formed by Si-O-Si branched with alkyl side groups, the polymer is highly flexible and no polar, able to reject water from the fermentation broth.…”

“…Being a macromolecule in which the main chain is formed by Si-O-Si branched with alkyl side groups, the polymer is highly flexible and no polar, able to reject water from the fermentation broth. However, the high flux obtained through polydimethylsiloxane membranes is usually accompanied of low selectivity, so that water is co-transported along with the organics from the feed to the permeate side 8,10 .…”