Host: The Japan Society of Mechanical Engineers
Name : [in Japanese]
Date : March 10, 2021 - March 11, 2021
Water-ethanol separation is one of the most important processes for producting pure bioethanol. Nevertheless, this separation is difficult process due to their near boiling point. The most general method for the water-ethanol complete separation is azeotropic distillation. However, this distillation consumes largeamount of energy which is equal to nearly half of energy on ethanol combustion. Therefore, to improve the water-ethanol separation process is still important issues. Carbon nanotubes(CNTs) are one of themost expected material to apply to separation membranes due to their nanopores. Recent investigations have demonstrated that water molecules in CNTs under axial electric field forms specific helical struc-tures and exclude alcohol molecules from CNTs using molecular dynamics(MD) simulation. Therefore,the combination of CNTs and axial electric fields can be used to water-alcohol separation. However,it is not easy to apply strong electric fields in nanoscale spaces. Hence, in this study, we investigated water-ethanol separation performance of tip functionalized(tip-charged) CNTs using MD simulation.
