Pervaporation Separation of Isopropanol/Water Using Zeolite Nanosheets: A Molecular Simulation Study.

J Phys Chem B

Department of Chemical Engineering, National Taiwan University, No. 1, Sec. 4, Roosevelt Road, Taipei 10617, Taiwan.

Published: September 2024

Reducing greenhouse gas emissions plays a crucial role in slowing down the rise of the global temperature. One of the viable options is to employ renewable energy sources such as alcohols that can be produced from biomass. Specifically, one of the most common alcohols is isopropanol (IPA). Energy-intensive distillation processes are however involved in its production because of the rather low product concentration from fermentation. Membrane technologies, specifically pervaporation (PV), represent a promising alternative to the IPA/water separation. Particularly, employing zeolite nanosheets as PV membranes may provide great opportunities to extract IPA owing to their ultrathin and hydrophobic nature. By employing molecular dynamics simulations, this study conducts a systematic study on a diverse set of nanosheet candidates with the aim of exploring their potential and identifying top-performing structures. The best candidate among structures studied herein is predicted to offer an exceptional IPA/water selectivity of more than 400 with an unprecedentedly large flux. Structure-property-performance relationships have also been established to offer insights into the rational design of PV membranes with improved performance.

Download full-text PDF

Source
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC11382281PMC
http://dx.doi.org/10.1021/acs.jpcb.4c04237DOI Listing

Publication Analysis

Top Keywords

zeolite nanosheets
8
pervaporation separation
4
separation isopropanol/water
4
isopropanol/water zeolite
4
nanosheets molecular
4
molecular simulation
4
simulation study
4
study reducing
4
reducing greenhouse
4
greenhouse gas
4

Similar Publications

Want AI Summaries of new PubMed Abstracts delivered to your In-box?

Enter search terms and have AI summaries delivered each week - change queries or unsubscribe any time!