(709c) Reactive Dehydration for Bioethanol Purification

The development of a new Reactive Dehydration Technology will be discussed, with the goal of substantial reduction of the energy consumption for purifying alcohol-water mixtures, e.g., in the manufacture of fuel grade ethanol from corn.  Although the immediate application of the new technology is fuel grade ethanol manufacture, the cost, energy consumption, and carbon footprint of evaporation of water are major impediments to commercialization of many projects.  This goal of reduced energy consumption is to be accomplished by adding a novel dehydrating reagent to the wet ethanol, which reacts with water using a catalyst.  The dehydrating agent is subsequently regenerated and reused in a closed chemical cycle.   In addition, the use of process simulations for the conceptual design will be discussed.

This research is partially funded by the the U.S. Department of Energy, Office of Science and the Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy.