Molecular Design and Fundamental Understanding of Pervaporation membranes for biofuel separation

LE NGOC LIEU

Publication

Molecular Design and Fundamental Understanding of Pervaporation membranes for biofuel separation

LE NGOC LIEU

Abstract

Bioethanol has currently emerged as one of important renewable and sustainable energy resources in the future, particularly in the mobile applications, such as transportation. A major challenge associated with bioalcohol development and application is the availability of efficient separation and purification techniques, which typically accounts for at least 40% (up to 80%) of the total process cost. Membrane-based pervaporation process has been reported as an energy efficient candidate in this application. This research focused on developing high performance pervaporation membranes for the separation and purification of ethanol on the aspects of material development, membrane formation and hollow fiber spinning. The material development was conducted by properly selecting monomers and synthesizing polyimide for ethanol dehydration. On the other hand, the fundamentals in membrane formation and modification were investigated by using Pebax? and polyimide as the membrane materials for ethanol recovery and dehydration, respectively. The knowledge from the aforementioned studies was subsequently applied to fabricate high performance dual layer hollow fibers and modify their outer selective layer for dehydration of ethanol.