Thermo pervap: The next step in energy efficient pervaporation Original Research Article

Thermo pervaporation (PV) is a pervaporation process that makes use of low quality heat to recover or purify solvents from water. Based on this technology it is possible to integrate the condensation energy for the direct heating of the feed during pervaporation in one single module. This concept was experimentally investigated for the separation of ethanol from a mixture of ethanol–water. It was possible to obtain a heat recovery of 33% (meaning that 33% of the heat transferred to the feed stream is condensation heat) and fluxes up to 0.5 kg/m2 h at high ethanol concentration.