A REVIEW OF PERVAPORATION MEMBRANE SYSTEM FOR THE SEPARATION OF ETHANOL/WATER (AZEOTROPIC MIXTURE)

Membrane separation process has become one of the emerging technologies that undergo a rapid growth for the past few decades. Pervaporation is the one of the membrane separation processes that have gained increasing interest in the chemical and allied industries. Pervaporation has significant advantages in separation of azeotropic systems where traditional distillation c an recover pure solvents with the use of entrainers, which then must be removed using an additional separation step. Pervaporation can be used to break the azeotrope, as its mechanism of separation is quite different to that of distillation. This review pr esents the separation of Azeotropic mixture such as ethanol - water by using Pervaporation. The fundamental aspects of Pervaporation over different types of membrane are revived and compared. The focus of this review is on separation of azeotropic mixture by using different membrane and effect of various parameters on Pervaporation.