(313d) Graphene Oxide Composite Membranes with Locked Interlayer Nanostructure for Ethanol/Water Separation

Excessive exploitation and use of fossil fuels have led to the global crisis of climate change. This has sparked the urgent need to switch to renewable fuels. Ethanol has been deemed as an exciting alternative to petroleum. Fermentation from biomass is one of the most common avenues for the production of bio-ethanol. Current technology, distillation, for ethanol/water separation is highly energy-intensive. It is in great need to develop highly energy-efficient technologies for ethanol separation from water. In this work, we prepared ultrathin, graphene oxide (GO) composite membranes with locked interlayer structure and hydrophobic nanochannels and investigated their separation performance for ethanol/water mixture. These hydrophobic membranes, as thin as 60 nm, exhibited preferential transport of ethanol over water allowing their application in the separation of ethanol from fermentation broth with a high ethanol flux of 4.3 kg m^-2 h^-1 and a separation factor of >30. The hydrophobic GO composite membranes with molecular nanochannels, therefore, may be used in the fermentation process for bioethanol production to greatly boost its energy efficiency and lower ethanol production cost.