Energy Demand of Biofuel Production Applying Distillation and/or Pervaporation

The energy used for distillation can reach the 40 % of the total energy demand in bioethanol production. The pervaporation is an important alternative membrane separation process to distillation that can be applied as a hybrid process or even as a single process to produce high quality of biofuel. It will be shown how the energy demand, MJ/kg(Ethanol) energy, can be saved applying pervaporation process with different separation factors and operating modes. It is stated that relatively high separation factor is needed to lower the energy demand below that of a simple distillation column.