Conventional ethanol plants utilize traditional distillation technology to dehydrate aqueous ethanol stream in a series of distillation columns, finished using pressure swing adsorption (PSA) to circumvent water/ethanol azeotrope at 95%.  Fuel consumption increases exponentially as the azeotrope concentration is approached.  Energy requirement  for water/ethanol separation 6,750 Kg/kg ethanol is single largest contributor to operating cost

Utilization of KSE reactive distillation technology and catalyst system provides ~20% reduction in energy cost at 60% capital cost of traditional distillation/PSA configuration

• utilizes a chemical cycle to replace the thermal distillation cycle
• Dehydration reagent (DR) added to wet ethanol
• DR reacts to form a volatile product (VP), readily separated from ethanol
• Dehydration reagent is readily regenerated and insoluble in water enabling facile phase separation
• Can run the cycle to remove ethanol or to remove water