Stability of Filled PDMS Pervaporation Membranes in Bio-Ethanol Recovery from a Real Fermentation Broth

Stability of Filled PDMS Pervaporation Membranes in Bio-Ethanol Recovery from a Real Fermentation Broth

Blog Article

Mixed matrix membranes (MMMs) have shown great potential in pervaporation (PV).As for many novel membrane materials however, lab-scale testing often involves synthetic feed solutions composed of mixed pure components, overlooking the possibly complex interactions and effects caused by the numerous other components in a real PV feed.This work studies the performance of MMMs with two different types of fillers, a core-shell material consisting of ZIF-8 coated on mesoporous silica and a hollow sphere of silicalite-1, in the PV of a real fermented wheat/hay straw hydrolysate broth for the production of bio-ethanol.All membranes, including a reference unfilled PDMS, show a declining permeability over time.

Interestingly, the unfilled PDMS membrane maintains a stable separation factor, whereas jolly joes grape candy the filled PDMS membranes rapidly lose selectivity to levels below that of the reference PDMS membrane.A membrane autopsy using XRD and SEM-EDX revealed an almost complete degradation of the crystalline ZIF-8 in the MMMs.Reference experiments with ZIF-8 nanoparticles in the fermentation broth demonstrated the influence of the broth on the ZIF-8 particles.However, the observed effects from the membrane autopsy could not exactly be replicated, likely due to distinct differences in conditions between the in-situ pervaporation process and the ex-situ reference experiments.

These findings raise significant questions regarding the potential applicability of MOF-filled MMMs in stor trebolle real-feed pervaporation processes and, potentially, in harsh condition membrane separations in general.This study clearly confirms the importance of testing membranes in realistic conditions.