Abstract:
The production of renewable fuels have received great attention due to the problematic
effects of non-renewable fuels on environment. The purification of ethanol is very
important for obtaining fuel grade ethanol, but the conventional strategies for transforming
bio-mass to biofuels are very energy-intensive and expensive. During fermentation, the
concentration of ethanol is normally up to 1-15% based on biomass source. The water
content for fuel grade ethanol should be limited to 1-3 wt. %. Distillation technique for
ethanol separation from fermentation broths is commonly utilized. Furthermore, this
strategy is very energy consuming and open the doors of certain other strategies like gas stripping, adsorption, ozonation etc.
Hydrophobic pervaporation is another methodology used for the separation of
water/alcohol mixtures. Pervaporation is a separation mechanism based on the membrane
in which the feed is injected in the form of fluid and a vapor are obtained as permeate. Due
to the trade-off between flux and selectivity, polymer membranes and inorganic
membranes are not generally adopted. A novel In-situ approach is used to fabricate ZIF-8
/Polyimide mixed matrix membrane (MMMs) with outstanding permeability. With its high
hydrophobicity ZIF-8 can provide an appropriate pore structure for the recovery of the
organic compounds. Different characterization techniques were adopted to confirm the
purity and performance of fillers and membranes. Membranes were tested on home based
pervaporation unit to check the performance parameters of pervaporation.
