Process Simulation of a Commercial Pervaporation Unit for Ethanol–Water Separation
Pervaporation is a proven technology that overcomes distillation to produce high-quality ethanol. The process is modeled and simulated in the literature, but the model’s accuracy with industrial data is rarely discussed. In this work, a commercial pervaporation membrane was modeled and simulated in...
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| Main Authors: | , |
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| Format: | Article |
| Language: | English |
| Published: |
MDPI AG
2025-06-01
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| Series: | Eng |
| Subjects: | |
| Online Access: | https://www.mdpi.com/2673-4117/6/7/136 |
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| Summary: | Pervaporation is a proven technology that overcomes distillation to produce high-quality ethanol. The process is modeled and simulated in the literature, but the model’s accuracy with industrial data is rarely discussed. In this work, a commercial pervaporation membrane was modeled and simulated in UniSIM<sup>®</sup> (R490) to purify ethanol from water after the azeotrope point of distillation. The pervaporation system was developed manually using a component splitter, adjust functions, and a spreadsheet. Results show that the simulation calculations were acceptable and differed from pilot-plant data by 4.6%. A correction factor was used to reduce the error further to 0.7%. |
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| ISSN: | 2673-4117 |