RAPID Funded Projects

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BETO Physical Property Data and Modeling of Bioseparations

This project aims to collect physical property and thermodynamics data for impactful bio-products and their separations, build thermodynamic models to represent multicomponent mixtures’ behavior, and incorporate these models into process simulation environments to allow for faster and more cost-effective scale-up of bio-separations technologies. The project work specifically targets the separation of organic acids from multicomponent mixtures typically encountered in bioprocess operations, using three distinct separation technologies: adsorption, membranes, and electrochemical techniques.

Investigators

Ignasi Palou-Rivera
Chief Technology Officer

Partner Organizations

Argonne National Laboratory Texas Tech University Siemens

Focus Areas

Date approved

October 20, 2022

Use of Power Ultrasound for Nonthermal, Nonequilibrium Separation of Ethanol/Water Solutions

Separation of liquid mixtures, frequently by distillation, consumes large amounts of energy in the chemical and process industries. This project proposes to develop, test, and demonstrate a continuous-flow, scalable, nonthermal, nonequilibrium liquid separation for the test case of ethanol + water that uses ultrasound, and avoids the heat transfer losses and azeotropic bottleneck of distillation. The basis of the separation is straightforward. When ultrasound passes through a nominally quiescent liquid with a free surface above, droplets are produced and form a mist.

Investigators

Hao Feng
Professor of Food and Bioprocess Engineering

Partner Organizations

University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign Carnegie Mellon University

Focus Areas

Date approved

July 01, 2018
Current TRL
6

High Purity Ethanol without Distillation: Carbon Nanotube Enabled Ethanol Dewatering

Biofuels produced from fermentation processes have long been processed using decades-old distillation technology. Distilling a minor component of this broth to a high purity requires substantial amounts of energy that can lessen the net-energy and profitability of the fuel produced. This work will demonstrate a new technology concept developed by Mattershift, LLC that uses a carbon nanotube (CNT) membrane to selectively extract the biofuel, in this case ethanol, from a fermentation broth.

Investigators

Jeffery McCutcheon
Associate Professor and Executive Director, Frauhofer USA Center for Energy Innovation

Partner Organizations

University of Connecticut

Focus Areas

Date approved

July 01, 2018
Current TRL
4

Three-Way Catalytic Distillation to Renewable Surfactants via Triglycerides

Renewable feedstocks, including triglycerides and lignocellulose-derived sugars, can be converted to a new class of ionic surfactants, called “oleo-furan sulfonates” (OFS) by multi-step solid acid catalysis. The renewable OFS surfactant exhibits superior properties relative to conventional fossil-derived materials with higher micelle-forming efficiency, stability in cold water, and resistance to hard water.

Investigators

Paul Dauenhauer
Lanny & Charlotte Schmidt Professor and MacArthur Fellow

Partner Organizations

University of Minnesota Sironix Renewables University of Delaware

Focus Areas

Date approved

November 01, 2017
Current TRL
4

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