Chromatographic Rectification of Ethanol

Abstract

A scalable technology for purifying ethanol from a dilute aqueous solution of ethanol, the technology incorporating vaporization of ethanol coupled with a chromatographic rectification process comprising feeding a vaporized ethanol/water mix onto a plurality of molecular sieve beds, to produce dehydrated ethanol vapor, which can then be condensed to recover purified dehydrated ethanol liquid. The scalable technology process is suitable for farm-scale production of fuel-grade ethanol, having the added benefit of allowing wet distillers grains to be used on-site as live-stock feed, thus eliminating the energy and shipping costs associated with drying and off-site distribution of the grains portions generated during the rectification process. Scalable technology, as provided herein, is also suitable for recovery of ethanol from processes which use ethanol during manufacture of a product. Current embodiments of the scalable technology as disclosed herein are suitable for production of fuel-grade ethanol at quantities of anywhere from about 1000 gallons per year to upwards of hundreds of millions of gallons per year, by reducing energy requirements and costs and reducing pollution, thereby minimizing the economy of scale effect to create a technology scalable to any output need. Embodiments disclose a plurality of smaller molecular sieve beds in series and use heat generated during desorption and regeneration of the molecular sieve beds as an energy source to aid in the vaporization step.

Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.