Emerging Separation Techniques for Butanol Biofuel
Training Center, Guangdong Food and Drug Vocational Technical School, Guangzhou 510663, China
| Abstract: | Biobutanol, a high-energy biofuel made from biomass, has better application prospects than bioethanol. With the dwindling of petroleum resources, biobutanol is one of the preferred alternatives to petroleum and other fossil energy sources. However, in addition to butanol, the biobutanol fermentation broth contains acetone, ethanol and most of the water. Poor separation effect and high separation cost have become one of the bottlenecks for the development of biobutanol. Therefore, the development of efficient and energy-saving separation technology is one of the keys to the industrialization of biobutanol. The traditional purification method has the fermentation broth first distilled in a prefractionator to remove the fermentation solids and some of the water, resulting in a concentrated organic solvent. The solvent is then separated by distillation to obtain ethanol, acetone and n-butanol. Aiming at the problem of difficult and energy-consuming separation of biobutanol fermentation broth, we introduce emerging separation techniques such as adsorption, gas extraction, pervaporation, and pertraction. Particular emphasis is placed on the salting-out process which improves the traditional distillation section of biobutanol production. Removing most of the water in the fermentation broth through the salting-out process can greatly reduce the energy consumption of subsequent distillation operations, providing a new efficient and energy-saving separation method. These salting agents are cheap and easy to obtain, easy to recover and recycle, and the inorganic salt used will not pollute the environment. Salting-out process is featured with mild conditions and simple operation, not only saving energy consumption, but also reducing CO2 emissions, and realizing energy saving and emission reduction. |
| Keywords: | Biobutanol; Separation; Salting-out; Extraction |
| DOI: | 10.57237/j.jest.2023.06.001 |
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Received: 23 November 2023
Accepted: 27 December 2023
Published Online: 28 December 2023
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