Influence of operation parameters on the separation of mixtures by pervaporation and vapor permeation with inorganic membranes. Part 1: Dehydration of solvents

The separation performance of two different commercially available tubular inorganic membranes was studied for solvent dehydration. The separation layers consisted of A-type zeolite and microporous silica. The membrane characteristics were determined as function of operating conditions such as feed composition, temperature, and permeate pressure in pervaporation and vapor permeation. Among different membranes of the same batch, flux and selectivity were reproducible within 10%. The partial flux of water as the preferentially permeating component increases linearly with the water vapor pressure difference between feed and permeate and depends only marginally (viscosity influence) upon the properties of the organic component. The flux of the organic (retained) component is low and can best be described by assuming a substance and membrane specific permeance (flux over partial pressure difference) that is independent of composition. At very low water concentration in the feed one would expect a strong increase in permeability of the retained component through non-zeolite pores and larger silica pores as predicted by pure component measurements. However, this effect was not observed in mixtures within the concentration range studied here. A temperature rise improves flux rates exponentially while selectivity remains high. Thus, higher module cost in comparison to polymeric membranes can be compensated by reduced membrane area if a higher operating temperature can be chosen. Flux and selectivity decline as a function of permeate pressure with decreasing driving force. In vapor permeation with inorganic membranes superheating of the vaporous feed improves their performance while for polymeric materials a steep flux decline is observed. High flux and selectivity are obtained in the separation of water from alcohols. The normalized flux values of the A-type zeolite membrane are roughly 10 kg/m2 h bar with a mixture selectivity of 2000 for methanol, 4000 for ethanol and 8000 for n-butanol. The average permeance of the amorphous silica membrane lies above 12 kg/m2 h bar with mixture selectivity of 50 for methanol, 500 for ethanol and 2000 for n-butanol. The separation mechanism is mainly based on adsorption and diffusion enhanced by shape selectivity and size exclusion in some cases. The transport characteristics could be described with a simple transport model based on normalized permeate fluxes. With regard to the operation stability of the membranes, no deterioration of the performance was observed for the A-type zeolite in solvent dehydration or in separation of water from reaction mixtures. The silica membrane showed an initial conditioning effect involving a rearrangement of Si–OH groups with an increase in selectivity and decrease in flux of about 30%. After a few hours the performance stabilized and remained constant during further operation.