Superhydrophobicity-improved Ethanol-Water Separation

Abstract

Efficient separation of biofuels from fermentation broths vis pervaporation plays an important role in addressing the global challenges, such as developing renewable energy. Great efforts have been continuously devoted in the past decades to developing high-performance pervaporation membranes. A recent report published in Science by Zhao et al. showed that a superhydrophobic surface could contribute significantly to improving the pervaporation separation of ethanol-water mixture, which will generate broad interest for the new design of separation membranes.

Keywords

Pervaporation / Biofuel / Superhydrophobicity / Polydimethylsiloxane(PDMS) / Permeation flux

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