Techno-economic comparison of energy usage between azeotropic distillation and hybrid system for water–ethanol separation

Conventional azeotropic distillation, consuming very high energy, is mostly used to produce high purity ethanol for renewable energy usage. In this study, the techno-economic comparison between azeotropic distillation (distillation followed by practical azeotropic distillation) and hybrid system (distillation followed by pervaporation system) for producing high purity of ethanol is demonstrated using the Pro II by Provision version 8.0. In the hybrid system, NaA zeolite membrane is used to separate the water from ethanol–water mixture. It is found that the hybrid system is the most effective technique for producing more than 99.4%wt of ethanol with an energy consumption of 52.4% less than the azeotropic distillation.

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► Distillation followed by pervaporation process is called hybrid system.
► The hybrid system is the most effective technique to produce >99.4%wt of ethanol.
► The hybrid system consumes energy of 52.4% less than the azeotropic distillation.