The Impact
The research team expect that this novel pervaporation technique to separate biofuels will decrease the energy needs of the process by 80% compared to industry standard distillation.
By designing a membrane able to separate biofuels from the fermentation broth at room temperature, the energy savings will make the process far more energy efficient and will therefore reduce carbon emissions. Production cost savings could potentially reduce the wholesale and retail costs of biofuels, making them more competitive with fossil fuel equivalents.
There are immediate benefits in the selective recovery of the high-value product n-Butanol from the fermentation broth, and also further potential that the developed techniques may be applied to a variety of different solvents.