DEHYDRATING ETHANOL USING A TERNARY SOLUTE AND EXTRACTIVE BATCH DISTILLATION

Anhydrous bioethanol is a material used in many applications including biofuel. Commonly, bioethanol is produced through sugar fermentation which results in a low concentration of ethanol. For utilization as biofuel, the lowest ethanol concentration should be 99.5%. Distillation is common technique to dry a mixture solution, however, the mixture of bioethanol and water is forming an azeotrope that limit the concentration of 96% ethanol. This paper discusses ethanol dehydration through extractive batch distillation by the addition of a ternary solute sodium hydroxide, citric acid, sulfuric acid, glycerol or ethylene glycol to ethanol. The initial concentration of ethanol used was 86% v/v, and the amount of ternary solute added was selected based on the colligative properties of the solution, which included a boiling point elevation (ΔTB) that ranged from 5 to 25 °C. All the ternary solutes could break or shift the ethanol-water azeotrope. The highest concentration of ethanol was 99.91% v/v at ΔTB = 25 °C with sulfuric acid as the ternary component. The resulted ethanol concentration exhibited a linear relationship with ΔTB, which was also affected by the boiling point of the ternary solute. This study successfully produced anhydrous bioethanol by low cost and simple distillation process.