Integrated manufacturing of REciclable multi-material COmposites for the TRANSport sector
Selective Permeation of Water through Angstrom?Channel Graphene Membranes for Bioethanol Concentration
Graphene membranes with sub?nanometer channels enable selective permeation of water. This allows for the low?energy concentration of ethanol with excellent separation performance.Graphene?based laminate membranes have been theoretically predicted to selectively transport ethanol from ethanol–water solution while blocking water. Here, robust angstrom?channel graphene membranes (ACGMs) fabricated by intercalating carbon sheets derived from chitosan into thermally reduced graphene oxide (GO) sheets are reported. ACGMs with robust and continuous slit?shaped pores (an average pore size of 3.9 Å) are investigated for the dehydration of ethanol. Surprisingly, only water permeates through ACGMs in the presence of aqueous ethanol solution. For the water?ethanol mixture containing 90 wt% ethanol, water can selectively permeate through ACGMs with a water flux of 63.8 ± 3.2 kg m?2 h?1 at 20 °C and 389.1 ± 19.4 kg m?2 h?1 at 60 °C, which are over two orders of magnitude higher than those of conventional pervaporation membranes. This means that ACGMs can effectively operate at room temperature. Moreover, the ethanol can be fast concentrated to high purity (up to 99.9 wt%). Therefore, ACGMs are very promising for production of bioethanol with high efficiency, thus improving its process sustainability.
» Author: Xiaofang Chen, Shabin Mohammed, Guang Yang, Tianyue Qian, Yu Chen, Hongyu Ma, Zongli Xie, Xiwang Zhang, George P. Simon, Huanting Wang
» Reference: doi:10.1002/adma.202002320
» Publication Date: 08/07/2020
This project has received funding from the European Union's Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under grant agreement Nº 768737
