Pervaporation dehydration of alcohols via noval dual-layer hollow fiber membranes

Abstract

A novel polyamide-imide/polyetherimide hollow fiber membrane with synergized performance using dual-layer spinning technology to circumvent the common swelling and deteriorated performance of integral asymmetric hollow fiber membranes for pervaporation dehydration. Dehydration of C 1-C 4 alcohols was carried out and the orders of their fluxes and permeances were analyzed. The hollow fibers spun at 2 cm air-gap and annealed at 75°C showed the highest pervaporation performance: separation factors for tert-butanol/water and iso-butanol/water binary systems were >50,000 with flux more than 700 g/sq m-hr. A comparison with literature data showed that the newly developed membranes outperform most other polymeric membranes for the dehydration of IPA and butanols. This is an abstract of a paper presented at the 8th World Congress of Chemical Engineering (Montreal, Quebec, Canada 8/23-27/2009).