Pervaporation properties of polyvinyl alcohol/ceramic composite membrane for separation of ethyl acetate/ethanol/water ternary mixtures

In further purification of ethyl acetate (EAC) process, azeotropic distillation or extractive distillation is usually applied. High energy consumption limits the economic profit of the process. In this study, pervaporation separation of EAC/ethanol (EA)/water ternary mixtures using the ceramic-supported polyvinyl alcohol (PVA) composite membrane was investigated to substitute the azeotropic distillation or extractive distillation. Swelling experiments were performed to evaluate the sorption characteristic of the membrane. Flory-Huggins theory was applied to study the interaction between the membrane and the penetrant. The UNIFAC model was adopted to investigate the variation of the penetrant activity in the membrane. The effects of operation temperature, feed water content and feed flow rate on the PV performance of the membrane were systematically investigated. The composite membrane exhibited high PV performance with the total flux of 2.1 kg·m⁻²·h⁻¹ and 94.9 wt% permeate concentration of water (operation condition: feed composition 82.6 wt% EAC, 8.4 wt% EA, 9 wt% water, feed temperature 60 °C, feed flow rate 252 mL· min⁻¹). The PV performance of the membrane varied slightly over a continuous PV experiment period of 110 h. Our results demonstrated that the PVA/ceramic membrane was a potential candidate for the purification of EAC/EA/water ternary mixtures.