Two-stage pervaporation process for effective in situ removal acetone-butanol-ethanol from fermentation broth

Two-stage pervaporation for ABE recovery from fermentation broth was studied to reduce the energy cost. The permeate after the first stage in situ pervaporation system was further used as the feedstock in the second stage of pervaporation unit using the same PDMS/PVDF membrane. A total 782.5 g/L of ABE (304.56 g/L of acetone, 451.98 g/L of butanol and 25.97 g/L of ethanol) was achieved in the second stage permeate, while the overall acetone, butanol and ethanol separation factors were: 70.7-89.73, 70.48-84.74 and 9.05-13.58, respectively. Furthermore, the theoretical evaporation energy requirement for ABE separation in the consolidate fermentation, which containing two-stage pervaporation and the following distillation process, was estimated less than ∼13.2 MJ/kg-butanol. The required evaporation energy was only 36.7% of the energy content of butanol. The novel two-stage pervaporation process was effective in increasing ABE production and reducing energy consumption of the solvents separation system.