A Novel, Low-Energy Stripper-Membrane Hybrid Process for Bioethanol Production, Phase II

The current distillation-molecular sieve process for ethanol separation from corn fermentation broth uses up to 20% of the energy content of the ethanol produced. It is expected that even more energy will be used to separate ethanol from cellulosic fermentation broths because they contains less ethanol. Therefore, development of a lower-energy ethanol separation process is of considerable interest to the bioethanol industry. This proposal describes a novel hybrid stripper-membrane separation process that could lower the energy consumption of ethanol production by 50%.