Pervaporation of Bioethanol Using a PDMS/PEI Composite Hollow Fiber Membrane

Pervaporation is one of the most promising separation processes for the purification of ethanol. Pervaporation performance is strongly influenced by the membrane material as well as by process conditions such as feed concentration and temperature. The separation performance of polymeric pervaporation membranes depends on the separation parameters and on the flux because of selective interactions with the specific components of the feed mixture. In this study, a composite hollow-fiber membrane with a thin polydimethylsiloxane (PDMS) active layer on a polyetherimide (PEI) macroporous support was used for pervaporative separation of ethanol produced by Saccharomyces cerevisiae from glucose fermentation broth. The pervaporation performance for ethanol/water binary mixtures was strongly dependent on the feed concentration and operating temperature with ethanol concentrations of 1–10%. The PDMS/PEI hollow-fiber composite membrane has quite good values of total flux and separation factor when compared with the published pervaporation performance results for other PDMS composite membranes.