Biobutanol produced by, e.g., acetone-butanol-ethanol (ABE) fermentation is a promising alternative to petroleum-based chemicals as, e.g., solvent and fuel. Recovery of butanol from dilute fermentation broths by hydrophobic membranes and adsorbents has been identified as a promising route. In this work, the adsorption of water and butanol vapor in a silicalite-1 film was studied using in situ attenuated total reflectance-Fourier transform infrared (ATR-FTIR) spectroscopy to better understand the adsorption properties of silicalite-1 membranes and adsorbents. Single-component adsorption isotherms were determined in the temperature range of 35-120 °C, and the Langmuir model was successfully fitted to the experimental data. The adsorption of butanol is very favorable compared to that of water. When the silicalite-1 film was exposed to a butanol/water vapor mixture with 15 mol % butanol (which is the vapor composition of an aqueous solution containing 2 wt % butanol, a typical concentration in an ABE fermentation broth, i.e., the composition of the gas obtained from gas stripping of an ABE broth) at 35 °C, the adsorption selectivity toward butanol was as high as 107. These results confirm that silicalite-1 quite selectively adsorbs hydrocarbons from vapor mixtures. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first comprehensive study on the adsorption of water and butanol in silicalite-1 from vapor phase.

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We used nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) spectroscopy and dynamic light scattering (DLS) techniques to study the structural and dynamic properties of micellar solutions of nonionic surfactants of a homologous series of oxyethylated isononylphenols--C9H19C6H4O(C2H4O)(n)H, where n = 6, 8, 9, 10, or 12--in a wide range of temperatures, including cloud points. The radii of the micelles and aggregates, as well as their compositions at different concentrations of surfactant, were determined. Using aqueous phenol solutions as a model, we studied the process of cloud point extraction with oxyethylated isononylphenols.

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