Bio-Ethanol Dehydration

Energy-efficient water removal in aqueous fermentation systems

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

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