| Title | Supercritical CO2 extraction of 1-butanol from aqueous solutions using a hollow fibre membrane contactor |
| Publication Type | Conference Paper |
| Year of Publication | 2012 |
| Authors | Moreno, T., Tallon S.J., and Catchpole O.J. |
| Conference Name | AIChE 2012 - 2012 AIChE Annual Meeting, Conference Proceedings |
| Date Published | 2012 |
| Abstract | Hollow fibre membrane contactors have recently received much attention in a number of separation or purification processes due to their large specific areas, enhancing mass transfer and therefore extraction efficiencies. The so called porocritical extraction process couples the porosity of a hollow fibre membrane contactor (HFM) with the high diffusivity of a supercritical fluid (generally carbon dioxide) to create a non-dispersive contact between solvent and aqueous feed, allowing a high throughput capacity without flooding or foaming issues independently of density difference between phases. This study presents the application of this technique to the separation of 1-butanol from aqueous solutions. 1-butanol, or "biobutanol" is a second generation biofuel that can be produced by anaerobic fermentation; however, its yield is currently limited to less than 5 % by mass of the fermentation broth and is normally recovered by distillation, which is highly energy intensive. In this work, the efficiency of a lab-scale HFM contactor in the supercritical CO2 extraction of 1-butanol from a model water/1-butanol mixture and from an actual fermentation broth is studied under a range of different flow rates, solvent-to-feed ratios and pressure conditions. Packed column fractionation was also carried out to enable comparison of extraction efficiency under a limited range of conditions. |
| URL | http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?eid=2-s2.0-84872845710&partnerID=40&md5=ed4e7678d0b988263c0f6054ace43e08 |
