Production of anhydrous ethanol using various PSA (Pressure Swing Adsorption) processes in pilot plant

Renewable energy is now increasingly becoming the center of interest as a solution to problems of fossil fuel. Bioethanol, especially, is able to substitute petroleum as fuel; making it a viable and promising renewable energy. Dehydration process is crucial for production of fuel ethanol. PSA (Pressure Swing Adsorption) process is most widely used due to its energy and cost efficiency. In this research, anhydrous ethanol was produced through various processes such as; two-bed, multi-tube bed, two-step process, and three-bed for analysis and comparison of each process. Through this study, two-bed process and multi-tube bed process were both shown to produce 99.5 wt% anhydrous ethanol from 87.0 wt% ethanol. However, multi-tube bed process has lower energy consumption. Two-step bed process has advantage of being able to produce anhydrous ethanol from input ethanol concentration as low as 83.1 wt%. Lastly, three-bed process allowed for longer regeneration time, making the process very stable and with higher yield due to less lost time in cycle switching. Crown Copyright (C) 2011 Published by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.