The Chatham demonstration: From design to operation of a 20 m3/d membrane-based ethanol dewatering system

Distillation/dehydration represents the largest fraction of the energy used in the production of ethanol. The Siftek™ technology introduced in this paper carries the potential of reducing energy consumption of distillation/dehydration by up to 50% through the single pass removal of water from the water/ethanol stream at the beer column outlet, using a novel membrane process.Siftek™ is a polymeric membrane that can be used to dry ethanol in the vapor phase. The membrane preferentially permeates water over ethanol in a continuous process. Energy reductions are obtained because this membrane is well suited to remove large quantities of water without phase change.The Siftek™ technology has been piloted since August 2006 in a Greenfield Ethanol plant in Tiverton, Ontario, Canada. The Tiverton unit has a capacity of 1 m3/d and has been producing fuel ethanol from a feed containing between 75 and 90 wt.% ethanol in a single stage system.Based on the successful operation of the pilot, it was decided to scale-up the technology. A two-stage membrane system with a capacity of 20 m3/d was built for the Greenfield Ethanol plant in Chatham, Ontario, Canada. The unit is equipped with full-scale commercial membrane modules and is capable of treating a beer-column feed containing 60–70 wt.% ethanol, producing > 99 wt.% fuel-grade ethanol.