Purification of Fuel Bioethanol by Pervaporation

Abstract

Begin to be insufficient energy resources with increasing population growth, developed countries has led to search for alternative energy to increase energy diversity. For these reasons, searching to the availability of clean and renewable energy sources has increased. Bioethanol is biofuel which can be produced from different biomass feedstocks. Bioethanol must be a high concentration for using as fuel. Distillation process is usually used for the ethanol recovery from aqueous solutions, but azeotrope of ethanol/ water mixtures cannot be separated by distillation. Membrane aided separation techniques can be used for the separation of these azeotropes. Pervaporation is a membrane process used to separate azeotrope mixtures by using a dense polymeric film.

In this study, ethanol was purified with pervaporation. For this purpose, in this article, we firstly reported the synthesis of hydrophilic cross-linked polyvinyl alcohol-chitosan blend membrane. The pervaporation performance of the blend membranes was studied by the dehydration of ethanol/water. Sorption and pervaporation tests were made. Flux and selectivity are analyzed how effecttiveness of different feed concentrations. The total flux and degree of swelling increased with increasing water concentration at feed. Selectivity decreased with increasing water concentration.