Abstract
Abstract The application of pervaporation for the separation of multicomponent mixtures may involve coupling effects among components and the membrane, which could increase or decrease the permeance of the target compound. In order to study and describe this phenomenon, mixtures of components present in two model reactions have been considered: the transesterification reaction between methyl acetate and butanol to produce methanol and butyl acetate, and the transesterification reaction between methanol and ethyl acetate to produce ethanol and methyl acetate. Both reactions are of utmost interest in the chemical industry and present high cost of separation due to the presence of azeotropic mixtures (i.e., methanol/methyl acetate; butanol/butyl acetate; ethanol/ethyl acetate). The separation performance of four commercial membranes (i.e., PERVAP 1255-30, PERVAP 4155-40, PERVAP 1255-50, PERVAP 4155-80) from Sulzer Chemtech, Switzerland, is evaluated. The effect of the feed concentration and the temperature on the separation performance was studied in terms of permeance and selectivity. Coupling effects were observed when the permeance of pure solvents was compared with that of the components in the mixture. The coupling effects were analyzed by the Hansen solubility approach and by the variation of activities within the membrane.
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