Preparation and application of a novel ethanol permselective poly(vinyltriethoxysilane) membrane

A novel thin poly(vinyltriethoxysilane) membrane with hydrophobic Si–O–Si backbone and vinyl groups is proposed to recover ethanol by pervaporation. It exhibits high flux (>10 000 g m−2 h−1), which is about ten times higher than that of PDMS, demonstrating that this membrane would facilitate the ethanol industrial production by pervaporation–fermentation process.