Investigation on Numerical Simulation of Acetone and Ethanol Separation from Water by Using Membrane

Abstract

A mass transfer model was developed to investigate liquid separation in membranes. Axial and radial diffusion inside the tube, through the membrane and within the shell side of the contactor were considered in the model. The system studied in this work is a hollow-fiber membrane based extractor of ethanol and acetone from aqueous solutions using near-critical carbon dioxide. Simulations of extraction percentages of ethanol and acetone show an average difference of 15.66 and 2.55 % with the experimental data, respectively.