Recipient Organization
PURDUE UNIVERSITY
(N/A)
WEST LAFAYETTE,IN 47907
Performing Department
(N/A)
Non Technical Summary
Separation is an essential technology in the chemical and process industries (CPI) to obtain pure chemicals. Distillation is a typical separation process with over 40,000 distillation columns in over 200 chemical processes in the United States. Moreover, distillation accounts for over 45 ? 50 % of in-plant energy consumption and about 5 % of total domestic energy consumption in the United States. Unfortunately, the thermal efficiency of distillation is low, with 10% being typical. Another challenge for conventional distillation is inefficient for azeotropic solution separation. Several technologies have been developed to break the azeotropic points, such as azeotropic distillation, extractive distillation, pressure swing distillation, adsorption, and membrane separation. However, these processes are inhibited by high energy consumption, high materials cost, increased capital cost, inducing additional chemicals, complicated operation conditions, hazardous chemical uses, etc. Aligning to the decarbonization of industry processes, distillation must be significantly improved or replaced by other energy-efficient separation and sustainable technologies with a low carbon footprint, such as energy-efficient electronic-driven ultrasonic separation.Bioethanol is currently widely produced from fermentation as the additive to gasoline for carbon neutralization in the transportation section. However, the vital constraints for bioethanol to fully replace gasoline are the low heating value (about 60 % of gasoline)and high energy consumption in purification depending on the ethanol concentrations. In addition, with the electrification of passenger vehicles by 2035, ethanol should be used to develop new products, such as renewable diesel or sustainable aviation fuel (SAF). However, the yield of renewable diesel or SAF is about 60 % (wt) because of the dehydration step in the synthesis. Compared to ethanol, butanol is considered a more suitable additive to gasoline without significant energy loss because of its comparable energy density. In addition, the yields of renewable diesel or SAF from butanol are 80 % (wt). However, the commercialization of butanol production through fermentation is mainly inhibited by the low butanol concentration (≤ 2%) in fermented brothsince butanol energy content is much less than the energy used for purification by distillation with current fermentation technology. Ultrasound-mediated separation technology can significantly cut purification energy consumption based on our previous studies on ultrasonic ethanol/water separation. However, in addition to butanol and water, the butanol fermentation broth contains acetone, ethanol, and other ingredients. These chemicals also affect the ultrasonic separation and need to determine the separation efficiency in ultrasonic separation. Ultrasonic separation has been applied to the aqueous-organic separation but not to organic mixture separation. The success of using ultrasonic separation to organic-organic separation can provide an energy-efficient solution to the current petroleum refinery industry. Ultrasonic separation has been applied to simple binary systems but not complicated multi-component systems. The success of this study can extend the ultrasonic separation scope to deal with the complicated multi-component separation process. Besides providing an energy-efficient separation technology for butanol fermentation commercialization, ultrasonic separation establishes a platform for aqueous-organic and organic-organic separation for future applications, such as petroleum refineries, biochemical refineries, etc.This proposed project aims to develop and validate a new, energy-efficient, and environmentally friendly technology --fully electrified ultrasonic separation-- for obtaining fuel-gradebutanolfrom the fermentation broth. The aim is to provide a novel, scalable technology to broaden the development of technology with low carbon footprints as alternative to distillation in the United States. Specific objectives supporting the overall goal include:Optimize operation conditions for ultrasonic separation of aqueous butanol solution.Determine the effect of other ingredients in the fermentation broth on the separation.Compare ultrasonic separation to other current technologies on efficiency.The proposed ultrasonic separation technology can be applied to the downstream fermentation broth components separation/purification process and bio-based hydrocarbon fractionation, such as SAF fractionation. This seed grant can lay the foundation for future funding opportunities to support the development of an electrification-oriented ultrasonic refinery to replace the current chemical processes that have high greenhouse emissions, thus contributing to achieving net-zero greenhouse emissions by 2050 by1) replacing the distillation process of hydrocarbons to obtain renewable diesel and sustainable jet fuels;2) replacing the solvent recovery process of solvent extraction of oil production or organic chemicals; and3) recovery of the valuable chemicals from the aqueous solutions.The research described herein, along with anticipated future directions, is expected to benefit stakeholders in the biofuel, food processing, and chemical engineering industries, assisting the stakeholders to achieve the net-zero greenhouse emission goal and reducing production costs.
Animal Health Component
50%
Research Effort Categories
Basic
30%
Applied
50%
Developmental
20%
Goals / Objectives
This proposed project aims to develop and validate a new, energy-efficient, and environmentally friendly technology -- fully electrified ultrasonic separation -- for obtaining the purified butanol (> 99%) from the fermentation broth. The aim is to provide a novel, scalable technology to broaden the development of technology with low carbon footprints as alternative to distillation in the United States. Specific objectives supporting the overall goal include:Optimize operation conditions for ultrasonic separation of aqueous butanol solution.Determine the effect of other ingredients in the fermentation broth on the separation.Compare ultrasonic separation to other current technologies on efficiency.Our long-term goal is to establish an ultrasonic separation platform to partially or fully replace the energy-intensive distillation process for aqueous and organic solutions. The primary purpose of this seed grant is to demonstrate the feasibility of the ultrasonic separation to obtain pure or near-pure acetone, butanol, and ethanol in the complicated ABE fermentation broth.
Project Methods
?1Single transducer ultrasonic separation processA single transducer ultrasonic separation unitconsists of an ultrasonic mist generation unit and a mist collection unit. An ultrasonic transducer (2.5 MHz, Steminc Inc.) is mounted on the center of an aluminum plate, and a DC power supply will be used to adjust its power rate by varying the voltage from 18 to 30 Volts. A transparent PVC pipe (Inner diameter: 4 inches, Length: 12 inches) is attached above the aluminum plate with the transducer as the center. A coiled copper pipe is installed inside the pipe to control the solution temperature by connecting it to a heating/cooling circulator (RTE-7, NESlab). A carrier gas inlet will be placed on the pipe about 5 inches above the transducer to transfer the mists to the collection units through the top vent. Pure nitrogen gas works as the carrier gas, and the flow rates can be controlled by a variable area flow meter from 0.3 to 25 L/min. Once the mists are formed by electrically charging the transducer, they are carried out by nitrogen gas to the collection unit. The collection unit consists of three modified glass vacuum traps immersed in the heating/cooling bath (RTE-111, NESlab) to keep the collection temperature constant. Unless a specific statement, each set of experiments will be performed intriplicateto ensure accuracy.2Multi-transducer ultrasonic separation processThe multi-transducer ultrasonic separation continuous systemmainly consists of a mist generation unit and a collection unit. The collection unit will use three glass vacuum traps immersed in a heating/cooling bath to control the collection temperatures. The mist generation chamber will be a rectangular aluminum pipe with a dimension of Length (24 inches), Width (2 inches), and Height (6 inches).Ten transducers will be evenly mounted on the center 20 inches, and a DC power supply will be used to control the power rate by varying the input voltage from 18 to 30 volts. A copper pipe about 0.5 inches above the bottom will be connected to the heating/cooling bath to control the solution temperature. Once the mists are formed, nitrogen gas can move out of the chamber to the collection unit, and the flow rates of the nitrogen gas can be controlled by a variable area flow meter varying from 1 to 10 L/min. The collected mist will be weighed and analyzed the concentration by HPLC. Unless a specific statement, each set of experiments will be performed intriplicateto ensure accuracy.3Component composition analysisThe collected mist will be weighed and analyzed the concentration by HPLC. HPLC is equipped with an Empower 3 chromatography data system and consists of an isocratic pump (Waters 1515), refractive index detector (Waters 2414), and autosampler (Waters 2707). HPLC grade water as the mobile phase and Waters sugar pak column will be used. The column and detector temperatures were set at 90oC and 40oC, respectively.