抄録
The dehydration technology of hydrous bio ethanol utilizing the zeolite membranes and their performances obtained from the commercial operation of the anhydrous ethanol plant with a capacity of annual 10,000kL is introduced. The zeolite membranes prepared onto the porous alumina tubes by hydrothermal deposition technique are installed in the unit shells called “module” to process effectively the hydrous ethanol produced through the conventional process sequence of the fermentation and distillation steps. The hydrous ethanol vapor was successfully dried through the system of four modules connected in series. During the starting one-hundred-day operation of the commercial plant, ethanol concentrations in the product and the permeate water has been maintained around 99.8vol% and less than 1.5vol%, respectively. The membrane dehydration technology was successfully demonstrated in the commercial production plant as a candidate of the promising next generation technologies.
