Abstract
Bioethanol production by fermentation exhibits high product inhibition, which impairs bioreactor productivity. To overcome this limitation, a fermentation–pervaporation integrated system has been proposed for in-situ product removal. However, pervaporation is a considerably expensive and technology improvements can promote industrial applications. In this contribution, dynamic pervaporation is investigated as a strategy to enhance ethanol separation performance. In literature, this technology has not been thoroughly studied, thus its potential is unexploited. Herein, a model to predict the dynamic behavior of pervaporation systems was developed and tuned using experimental data of ethanol removal with a PDMS membrane. Then, a sensitivity analysis was performed to provide process understanding under periodic operation. The proposed dynamic mathematical model adequately described the experimental data and the periodic operation enabled to increase the average ethanol flux 13 times compared with conventional operation.
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