Process Intensification in Bio-Ethanol Production–Recent Developments in Membrane Separation Academic Article uri icon

abstract

  • Ethanol is considered as a renewable transport fuels and demand is expected to grow. In this work, trends related to bio-ethanol production are described using Thailand as an example. Developments on high-temperature fermentation and membrane technologies are also explained. This study focuses on the application of membranes in ethanol recovery after fermentation. A preliminary simulation was performed to compare different process configurations to concentrate 10 wt% ethanol to 99.5 wt% using membranes. In addition to the significant energy reduction achieved by replacing azeotropic distillation with membrane dehydration, employing ethanol-selective membranes can further reduce energy demand. Silicalite membrane is a type of membrane showing one of the highest ethanol-selective permeation performances reported today. A silicalite membrane was applied to separate a bio-ethanol solution produced via high-temperature fermentation followed by a single distillation. The influence of contaminants in the bio-ethanol on the membrane properties and required further developments are also discussed.

authors

  • Kumakiri, Izumi
  • Yokota, Morihisa
  • Tanaka, Ryotaro
  • Shimada, Yu
  • Kiatkittipong, Worapon
  • Lim, Jun Wei
  • Murata, Masayuki
  • Yamada, Mamoru

publication date

  • 2021

start page

  • 1028

volume

  • 9

issue

  • 6