Wei Zhongwei, Zhang Shaoqing, Chang Li, Liu Hongliang, Jiang Lei
Key Laboratory of Bio-inspired Materials and Interfacial Science, Technical Institute of Physics and Chemistry, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, China.
School of Future Technology, University of Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, China.
Front Chem. 2022 Sep 30;10:1037828. doi: 10.3389/fchem.2022.1037828. eCollection 2022.
Ethanol, which can be scalable produced from fermented plant materials, is a promising candidate to gasoline as the next-generation liquid fuel. As an energy-efficient alternative to distillation, membrane-based strategies including pervaporation and reverse osmosis have been developed to recover ethanol from fermentation broths. However, these approaches suffer the drawback of low separation flux. Herein, we report a superwetting membrane system to enrich ethanol from water in a high-flux manner. By synergistically regulating surface energy of the solid porous membrane and hydration between an additive inorganic potassium salt and water, concentrated ethanol can rapidly wetting and permeate the porous membrane, with the salt solution being blocked. Using this newly developed superwetting membrane system, we can achieve fast enrichment of ethanol from water, with flux of two orders magnitude higher than that of pervaporation and reverse osmosis membranes.
乙醇可由发酵植物材料规模化生产，作为下一代液体燃料，它是汽油的一个有前景的替代品。作为蒸馏的一种节能替代方法，包括渗透汽化和反渗透在内的基于膜的策略已被开发出来，用于从发酵液中回收乙醇。然而，这些方法存在分离通量低的缺点。在此，我们报道了一种超润湿性膜系统，以高通量方式从水中富集乙醇。通过协同调节固体多孔膜的表面能以及添加剂无机钾盐与水之间的水合作用，浓缩乙醇能够快速润湿并渗透多孔膜，而盐溶液则被阻挡。使用这种新开发的超润湿性膜系统，我们可以实现从水中快速富集乙醇，通量比渗透汽化膜和反渗透膜高两个数量级。
