Banana waste has the potential to produce ethanol with a low-cost and sustainable production method.
The present work seeks to evaluate the separation of ethanol produced from banana waste (rejected fruit)
using pervaporation with different operating conditions. Tests were carried out with model solutions and
broth with commercial hollow hydrophobic polydimethylsiloxane membranes. It was observed that
pervaporation performance for ethanol/water binary mixtures was strongly dependent on the feed
concentration and operating temperature with ethanol concentrations of 1–10%; that an increase of feed
flow rate can enhance the permeation rate of ethanol with the water remaining at almost the same value;
that water and ethanol fluxes was increased with the temperature increase; and that the higher effect in
flux increase was observed when the vapor pressure in the permeate stream was close to the ethanol
vapor pressure. Better results were obtained with fermentation broth than with model solutions,
indicated by the permeance and membrane selectivity. This could be attributed to by-products present
in the multicomponent mixtures, facilitating the ethanol permeability. By-products analyses show that
the presence of lactic acid increased the hydrophilicity of the membrane. Based on this, we believe that
pervaporation with hollow membrane of ethanol produced from banana waste is indeed a technology
with the potential to be applied.