Journal of Advanced Chemical Engineering

Pervaporation separation of biobutanol: A potential solution to enhance its contribution to the biofuel market

2^nd International Conference on Advances in Chemical Engineering and Technology

November 16-17, 2017 | Paris, France

Jules Thibault, Hoda Azimi and Handan Tezel

University of Ottawa, Canada

Posters & Accepted Abstracts: J Adv Chem Eng

Abstract:

Biobutanol produced from Acetone-Butanol-Ethanol (ABE) fermentation is considered to be promising biofuel for the partial replacement for fossil fuels. However, the need for inexpensive feedstock, the reduction of product inhibition via in-situ recovery to achieve higher final butanol concentration, higher yield, efficient method for solvent recovery and water recycle are obstacles which currently prevent making this bio-alcohol economically viable. It is believed that pervaporation, a membrane based-process, can be used advantageously for the in-situ butanol recovery among other potential different solvent recovery methods such as adsorption, liquid-liquid extraction, gas stripping as a result of its high selectivity, energy-saving and efficiency. Based on the studies reported in the literature which have been done on the pervaporation separation of butanol, polydimethylsiloxane (PDMS) has been selected to be a reliable membrane due to its high hydrophobicity, ease of preparation, and its good thermal, chemical and mechanical properties. In this study, nano-activated carbon adsorbent particles were embedded in the matrix of the PDMS membrane to improve the performance of butanol separation by pervaporation by increasing the flux and the selectivity of the membrane. Activated carbon (AC) adsorbent, with it high adsorption capacity and kinetics of adsorption, has shown to have outstanding characteristics for the adsorption separation of the butanol from the ABE model solutions and binary solutions of butanol. While the separation factor for the mixed matrix membrane increased continuously with an increase in the concentration of nanoparticles in PDMS, the total flux reached a maximum at 8 wt% nano-particles loading. The separation factor of butanol and the total flux increased by 105% and 109%, respectively when compared with the neat PDMS membrane. In addition, the performance of the PDMS-AC composite membranes was superior to the performance of the commercial PDMS membranes. The study indicates that the presence of nano-adsorbent in the matrix of a membrane would be useful for pervaporation separation of biobutanol from ABE fermentation broth.