Energy-saving concepts for the dehydration of alcohol

Ethanol is produced by the fermentation of sugars in an aqueous phase. The ethanol is concentrated by rectification. After a simple rectification process, ethanol will still contain small amounts of water - as an azeotropic mixture. Dehydrated ethanol is produced either in complex distillation processes or by means of other technologies such as pervaporation or adsorption using molecular sieves.