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Experimental Validation of Hybrid Distillation-Vapor Permeation Process for Energy Efficient Ethanol-Water Separation
Citation:
VANE, L. M., F. R. ALVAREZ, Y. Huang, AND R. W. BAKER. Experimental Validation of Hybrid Distillation-Vapor Permeation Process for Energy Efficient Ethanol-Water Separation . Journal of Chemical Technology and Biotechnology. John Wiley and Sons, LTD, , Uk, 85(4):502-511, (2010).
Impact/Purpose:
To inform the public.
Description:
The energy demand of distillation-based systems for ethanol recovery and dehydration can be significant, particularly for dilute solutions. An alternative separation process integrating vapor stripping with a vapor compression step and a vapor permeation membrane separation step, termed Membrane Assisted Vapor Stripping (MAVS), has been proposed. The hydrophilic membrane separates the ethanol-water vapor into water-rich permeate and ethanol-enriched retentate vapor streams from which latent and sensible heat can be recovered. The objective of this work was to experimentally demonstrate the performance of a MAVS system and to compare the observed performance with chemical process simulation results using a 5 wt% ethanol aqueous feed stream as the benchmark