title: Dehydration of ethanol by facile synthesized glucose-based silica.
abstract: Bioethanol is considered a potential liquid fuel that can be produced from biomass by fermentation and distillation. Although most of the water is removed by distillation, the purity of ethanol is limited to 95-96 % due to the formation of a low-boiling point, water-ethanol azeotrope. To improve the use of ethanol as a fuel, many methods, such as dehydration, have been proposed to avoid distillation and improve the energy efficiency of extraction. Glucose-based silica, as an adsorbent, was prepared using a simple method, and was proposed for the adsorption of water from water-ethanol mixtures. After adsorption using 0.4 g of adsorbent for 3 h, the initial water concentration of 20 % (water, v/v) was decreased to 10 % (water, v/v). For water concentrations less than 5 % (water, v/v), the adsorbent could concentrate ethanol to 99 % (ethanol, v/v). The Langmuir isotherms used to describe the adsorption of water on an adsorbent showed a correlation coefficient of 0.94. The separation factor of the adsorbent also decreased with decreasing concentration of water in solution.
authors.affiliation: Department of Chemical Engineering, Inha University, Incheon 402-751, South Korea.
authors.forename: Baokun
authors.initials: B
authors.lastname: Tang
authors.forename: Wentao
authors.initials: W
authors.lastname: Bi
authors.forename: Kyung Ho
authors.initials: KH
authors.lastname: Row
mesh_terms: D003681:Dehydration; D000431:Ethanol / Q000737:chemistry*; D005947:Glucose / Q000737:chemistry*; D012822:Silicon Dioxide / Q000737:chemistry*
chemical_list: D000431:Ethanol; D012822:Silicon Dioxide; D005947:Glucose