title: Organic Microporous Nanofillers with Unique Alcohol Affinity for Superior Ethanol Recovery toward Sustainable Biofuels.
abstract: To minimize energy consumption and carbon footprints, pervaporation membranes are fast becoming the preferred technology for alcohol recovery. However, this approach is confined to small-scale operations, as the flux of standard rubbery polymer membranes remain insufficient to process large solvent volumes, whereas membrane separations that use glassy polymer membranes are prone to physical aging. This study concerns how the alcohol affinity and intrinsic porosity of networked, organic, microporous polymers can simultaneously reduce physical aging and drastically enhance both flux and selectivity of a super glassy polymer, poly-[1-(trimethylsilyl)propyne] (PTMSP). Slight loss in alcohol transportation channels in PTMSP is compensated by the alcohol affinity of the microporous polymers. Even after continuous exposure to aqueous solutions of alcohols, PTMSP pervaporation membranes loaded with the microporous polymers outperform the state-of-the-art and commercial pervaporation membranes.
authors.affiliation: MIIT Key Laboratory of Critical Materials Technology for New Energy Conversion and Storage, State Key Laboratory of Urban Water Resource and Environment, School of Chemistry and Chemical Engineering, Harbin Institute of Technology, Harbin, 150001, P.R. China.|Manufacturing, CSIRO, Gate 3 Normanby Road, Clayton, VIC, 3169, Australia.|School of Marine Science and Technology, Harbin Institute of Technology, Weihai, 264209, P.R. China.
authors.forename: Xi Quan
authors.initials: XQ
authors.lastname: Cheng
authors.affiliation: Manufacturing, CSIRO, Gate 3 Normanby Road, Clayton, VIC, 3169, Australia.
authors.forename: Kristina
authors.initials: K
authors.lastname: Konstas
authors.affiliation: Manufacturing, CSIRO, Gate 3 Normanby Road, Clayton, VIC, 3169, Australia.
authors.forename: Cara M
authors.initials: CM
authors.lastname: Doherty
authors.affiliation: Australian Resources Research Centre, CSIRO, Kensington, WA6155, Australia.
authors.forename: Colin D
authors.initials: CD
authors.lastname: Wood
authors.affiliation: Manufacturing, CSIRO, Gate 3 Normanby Road, Clayton, VIC, 3169, Australia.
authors.forename: Xavier
authors.initials: X
authors.lastname: Mulet
authors.affiliation: Manufacturing, CSIRO, Gate 3 Normanby Road, Clayton, VIC, 3169, Australia.
authors.forename: Zongli
authors.initials: Z
authors.lastname: Xie
authors.affiliation: Manufacturing, CSIRO, Gate 3 Normanby Road, Clayton, VIC, 3169, Australia.
authors.forename: Derrick
authors.initials: D
authors.lastname: Ng
authors.affiliation: Manufacturing, CSIRO, Gate 3 Normanby Road, Clayton, VIC, 3169, Australia.|Department of Chemical Engineering, Monash University, Clayton, VIC, 3800, Australia.
authors.forename: Matthew R
authors.initials: MR
authors.lastname: Hill
authors.affiliation: Manufacturing, CSIRO, Gate 3 Normanby Road, Clayton, VIC, 3169, Australia.|Department of Chemical Engineering, University of Edinburgh, Edinburgh, EH9 3FL, United Kingdom.
authors.forename: Cher Hon
authors.initials: CH
authors.lastname: Lau
authors.affiliation: MIIT Key Laboratory of Critical Materials Technology for New Energy Conversion and Storage, State Key Laboratory of Urban Water Resource and Environment, School of Chemistry and Chemical Engineering, Harbin Institute of Technology, Harbin, 150001, P.R. China.
authors.forename: Lu
authors.initials: L
authors.lastname: Shao
mesh_terms: D056804:Biofuels; D000431:Ethanol / Q000302:isolation & purification*; D008567:Membranes, Artificial; D011108:Polymers / Q000737:chemistry; D016062:Porosity
chemical_list: D056804:Biofuels; D008567:Membranes, Artificial; D011108:Polymers; D000431:Ethanol
keywords: alcohols; biofuels; membranes; microporous materials; polymers