Abstract. Pervaporation, a membrane-based technique, is taken into consideration in order to separate water from biodiesel-methanol mixtures. Several operational conditions in biodiesel production could cause water contamination into the reaction mixture, which can affect biodiesel production and quality. In this study, bacterial cellulose-alginate (BCA) nanocomposite film was applied as a selective membrane in order to separate water from biodiesel-methanol mixtures using pervaporation. For effective operation, factors that affected the performance in the pervaporation, such as concentration of water in the biodiesel-methanol mixtures and temperature of the process were investigated. It was demonstrated that, the BCA membrane has good potential for removing water from the biodiesel-methanol mixtures. Under a permeate pressure of 10 mmHg and 30 °C, the BCA membrane could separate water from the mixture containing methyl ester (C10:0): methanol: water at a weight ratio of 42.3: 52.7: 5 with a total permeate flux of 148 g/(m 2 h) and a water selectivity of 332. The permeate was contained 94.5% w/w water and methyl ester was completely rejected by the BCA membrane. The increase of water concentration in biodiesel-methanol mixtures and the temperature rise resulted in an increase in the permeate flux but lowered the selectivity.
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.