PDMS membrane
Compared with conventional distillation technology, pervaporation is energy efficient as only the permeate is vaporized, thus saving considerable energy [18,19]. The performance and composition of the membrane in pervaporation is very critical for efficient ethanol recovery. To investigate the effect of CNTs on pervaporation performance, PDMS membranes with different loading weights of 2, 5, and 10 wt% CNTs were investigated in an ethanol–water binary solution at 30◦C, and the results are shown in Fig. 2.
The total flux and ethanol separation factor of the pure PDMS membrane were 29.1g/m2 h and 2.9, respectively, as shown in