Removal and recovery of solvents from fermentation broth by pervaporation and extractive pervaporation process using liquid membranes in novel coated hollow fiber substrates

摘要

Pervaporation is attractive for separation and recovery of volatile fermentation byproducts present at low concentrations. Although polymeric or ceramic membranes are quite successful in removing most volatile organic compounds (VOCs) from their dilute aqueous solution, their selectivities for removing polar organic compounds are not very high. Previous studies indicated that liquid membranes can achieve much higher selectivity for small molecules such as acetic acid, butanol, etc. Here, we have focused on liquid membranes immobilized in novel porous hollow fiber-based membranes as a support for the pervaporation process. Volatile fermentation byproducts such as acetone, butanol and ethanol present in low concentrations have been separated by novel liquid membranes of tri-n-octylamine (TOA).