Novel Nanoporous Inorganic Membranes for Energy Efficient Pervaporation Separation

Biorefineries convert biomass into useful intermediates such as bioethanol for fuels, energy, and chemicals. For bioethanol to be used as fuel, it needs to be dehydrated. Pervaporation separation has combined advantages of reverse osmosis and membrane gas separation and can reduce energy use by 60-80% compared to conventional technologies. Nanoporous zeolite membranes have superior pervaporation performance with excellent organic fouling resistance. However, their commercial applications are limited due to high membrane cost and poor production reproducibility. The proposed project will develop novel self-supporting zeolite membranes with excellent structural integrity, controllable nanoporous structure, and optimized membrane geometry to achieve high selectivity and permeability and long term durability for pervaporation dehydration applications. In Phase I zeolite membranes will be fabricated via a novel membrane fabrication process using an additive manufacturing technology. The zeolite raw material formulation and membrane fabrication process will be developed to produce low cost and robust membranes. The fabricated zeolite membranes will be evaluated to assess their structural robustness, selectivity, and permeation flux to separate water from organics. Pervaporation separation is an effective and efficient membrane separation technology that uses 60-80% less energy than conventional distillation process. The proposed research will develop low cost and high performance inorganic membranes for bioethanol dehydration applications. Commercial Applications and Other Benefits: The successful development of the proposed technology will enable large scale production of low cost and high performance zeolite membranes for dehydration of organics, organic/organic separations, and water purification using energy efficient pervaporation separation process.