investigated the ABE production by integrating commercial PDMS composite membranes with ABE fermentation.
However, the separation factor of butanol for the membrane was only 13.7–15.7, which was difficult to remove effectively butanol from the fermentation broth, so butanol inhibition on ABE-producing microorganism still remained (Hecke et al., 2013). Since butanol is toxic to the ABE producing microorganism and the product inhibition would occur when its concentration was up to 5 g/L, it would be preferred to kept butanol concentration as low as possible during ABE fermentation (Qureshi and Ezeji, 2008). Therefore, PV membranes with higher solvent flux and higher separation factor
are in urgent need for more efficient and more economical butanol production by a fermentation–pervaporation coupled
process