Efficient Bioethanol Dehydration Process: Pervaporation

Pervaporation(PV) is an attractive membrane technology to separate aqueous organic mixtures. It promises lower energy consumption in the traditional area of chemical and in the industry of biotechnology such as biofuel production facilities. Pervaporation performance depends on appropriate membrane selection. It is desirable to have membrane with good permeability, selectivity, chemical and temperature stability. In this work a natural polysaccharide Sodium Alginate has been used as membrane material and cross-linked with glutaraldehyde. After pervaporation tests have been applied, flux and selectivity values were calculated. It was seen that with increasing the water content in the feed flux increased but selectivity decreased.