Design and operation of an enhanced pervaporation device with static mixers

Abstract

Pervaporation has a high potential for separating miscible solutions, particularly azeotropic mixtures. However, mass transfer limitations have long been a common concern in pervaporation device design. Therefore, in this work, we design a static mixer-based pervaporation device using water–ethanol separation as a model system and further develop computational fluid dynamics tools to investigate systematically all the influencing parameters. In the experiments, we use three-dimensional printed helical static mixers in the feed liquid channel to enhance mass transfer and implement a Sulzer pervaporation membrane for fast removal of water from ethanol. Using flow and mass-transfer simulations, we fit the membrane mass transfer coefficient and provide predictive models for optimal process design. Our pervaporation assembly exhibits promising performance and potential toward pervaporation processes for the removal of water from organics and is preferably scaled out by using stackable designs.