Separation of Butanol Using Pervaporation: A Review of Mass Transfer Models

Abstract

Pervaporation is a suitable technique for butanol recovery from aqueous solutions especially ABE fermentation broths. The performance of the membrane, in terms of permeation flux and modelling of the mass transfer through membranes provides a deeper understanding, which may assist to orient the research and the development of pervaporation processes. Modelling of the mass transport through the membrane is based on sorption and diffusion of the components into and across the membrane. In this study, an overview of the different models used for the pervaporation separation of butanol is presented. Up to now, the solutiondiffusion based models were the main methods used and the Maxwell-Stefan theory was very limited. In addition, to our knowledge, the pore-flow model was not applied for the modelling of butanol pervaporation separation. Moreover, the Maxwell-Stefan theory seems to be the most accurate mass transfer model to be used for the pervaporation separation method in comparison to the other models.

Polymer inclusion membranes containing ionic liquids for the recovery of n-butanol from ABE solutions by pervaporation

“…In order to characterize the mass transfer in the system the resistances-in-series approach based on the solution-diffusion concept has been applied. According the solutiondiffusion model the flux of a component i across the membrane can be written as a function of an overall mass transfer coefficient and the driving force [31,32]:…”

Modeling and simulation of pervaporation (PV) separation for alcohol dehydration

“…The most important industrial application of the PV process is the dehydration of organic solvents using hydrophilic membranes. The PV process is extensively used for alcohol dehydration (e.g., ethanol, isopropanol, t-butanol, and tetrahydrofuran) that forms an azeotropic mixture with water at a certain composition [ 1 ]. This process has been considered as an alternative to many conventional processes (e.g., extractive or azeotropic distillation) to separate azeotropic mixtures, mixtures with close boiling points, and mixtures of heat-sensitive compounds [ 2 ].…”

Pathway dissection, regulation, engineering and application: lessons learned from biobutanol production by solventogenic clostridia

“…Meanwhile, to overcome the intrinsic weaknesses of clostridia, nonsolvent-producing species, such as Escherichia coli and Saccharomyces cerevisiae, have been engineered by synthetic biological means to produce butanol [14]. As a consequence, various review articles have been published recently that summarize the general aspects of ABE fermentation [1] and focus on the metabolic pathways and metabolic engineering tools of clostridia [15,16], redox potential regulation [17], economical substrate-derived carbohydrates [18][19][20], butanol toxicity and tolerance [21,22], butanol fermentation technology [23], as well as butanol separation techniques [24][25][26]. Here, the intention of this review is to sum up the development of clostridia-based ABE fermentation from strain improvement to bioprocess optimization, particularly focusing on recent research progresses in dissecting metabolic pathway and relevant regulation mechanism of butanol production in solventogenic clostridia.…”