PDMS/ceramic composite membrane for pervaporation separation of acetone–butanol–ethanol (ABE) aqueous solutions and its application in intensification of ABE fermentation process

Pervaporation (PV) has attracted increasing attention because of its potential application in bio-butanol recovery from fermentation process. In this work, PDMS/ceramic composite membrane was employed for PV separation of acetone–butanol–ethanol (ABE) aqueous solutions. The influence of coupling effect on the molecular transport during the PV process was systematically investigated. The separation performance and transport phenomena of ABE molecules were discussed based on the analysis and calculation of physicochemical properties such as solubility parameter, polarity parameter, interaction parameter, activity coefficient. The results suggested that the ABE separation factor was mainly determined by the intrinsic solubility parameter and driving force. Coupling effect in the ABE multicomponent system was closely related to the interaction parameters between components themselves and between component and membrane. Also, the PDMS membrane was integrated with ABE fermentation to construct an efficient intensification process. It was found that the rate matching of fermentation and in situ removal could improve the ABE productivity by 2 times. ã 2014 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.