Hollow fiber modules with ceramic-supported PDMS composite membranes for pervaporation recovery of bio-butanol

Abstract The practical application of hollow fiber membranes for pervaporation technology has been received growing attention in recent years. This work reports the development of hollow fiber modules of ceramic-supported polydimethylsiloxane (PDMS) composite membranes applied for pervaporation process. Computational fluid dynamics (CFD) technique was used to simulate and optimize the flow field distribution in the modules with different packing density and cross-section layout. The hollow fiber modules with proposed configurations were fabricated in our lab and evaluated by pervaporation measurement in model butanol aqueous solution and real fermentation broth. The results suggested that the design of packing density and cross-section layout could realize the optimization of module configuration. The optimized module filled with 7 bundles of hollow fiber membranes at a high packing density of 560 m²/m³ exhibits a high and stable performance in the real ABE fermentation broth during 120 h continuous operation at 40 C. The average total flux was 1000 g/m² h and separation factor were 6.4 for ethanol, 22.2 for butanol and 28.6 for acetone, respectively. Our results demonstrated that the hollow fiber modules developed in this work could be competitive candidates for the practical application in pervaporation recovery of bio-butanol.