Multiblock Copolymer Grafting for Butanol Biofuel Recovery by a Sustainable Membrane Process

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• 作者：Shankarayya Vijay Kumar ; Carole Arnal-Herault ; Miao Wang ; Jérôme Babin ; Anne Jonquieres
• 刊名：ACS Applied Materials & Interfaces
• 出版年：2016
• 出版时间：June 29, 2016
• 年：2016
• 卷：8
• 期：25
• 页码：16262-16272
• 全文大小：492K
• 年卷期：0
• ISSN：1944-8252

文摘

Biobutanol is an attractive renewable biofuel mainly obtained by the acetone–butanol–ethanol (ABE) fermentation process. Nevertheless, the alcohol concentration has to be limited to a maximum of 2 wt % in ABE fermentation broths to avoid butanol toxicity to the microorganisms. The pervaporation (PV) membrane process is a key sustainable technology for butanol recovery in these challenging conditions. In this work, the grafting of azido-polydimethylsiloxane (PDMS-N₃) onto a PDMS-based multiblock copolymer containing alkyne side groups led to a series of original membrane materials with increasing PDMS contents from 50 to 71 wt %. Their membrane properties were assessed for butanol recovery by pervaporation from a model aqueous solution containing 2 wt % of n-butanol at 50 °C. The membrane flux J_50μm for a reference thickness of 50 μm strongly increased from 84 to 192 g/h m² with increasing PDMS content for free-standing dense membranes with thicknesses in the range of 38–95 μm. At the same time, the intrinsic butanol permeability increased from 1.47 to 4.68 kg μm/h m² kPa and the permeate butanol content was also strongly improved from 38 to 53 wt %, corresponding to high and very high membrane separation factors of 30 and 55, respectively. Therefore, the new grafted copolymer materials strongly overcame the common permeability/selectivity trade-off for butanol recovery by a sustainable membrane process.