• Membrane Journal
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• v.27 no.6
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• pp.487-498
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• 2017

In this study, pervaporation performances of water/methanol and water/butanol mixture were evaluated using zeolite 4A membranes manufacutred by FINETECH by experimental works and numerical modeling. Permeation and separation characteristics, such as flux and separation factor, were analyzed by gas chromatography (TCD) and liquid nitrogen traps. Experiments have shown that water is selectively separated from a mixture of water and methanol (separation factor up to approximately 250) and water and butanol (separation factor up to approximately 1,500). Generalized Maxwell Stefan (GMS) theory was implemented to predict pervaporation behaviors of water/alcohol mixtures and diffusional coefficients of zeolite layer were obtained through parameter estimation using $MATLAB^{(R)}$ optimization toolbox. Since the pore size of zeolite 4A are much larger than kinetic diameter of water molecules and smaller than those of methanol and butanol, zeolite 4A membranes can be applied to in situ water removal process such as membrane reactors or hybrid reaction-dehydration process.