Ethanol dehydration, past the azeotrope
A hydrophilic pervaporation membrane pulling water out of near-azeotropic ethanol — the separation relative volatility cannot do.
The actual dark-mode canvas: near-azeotropic ethanol fed to a hydrophilic membrane that permeates water preferentially, drying the retentate past the azeotrope.
Why this crosses what distillation cannot
At the azeotrope vapour and liquid have the same composition, so relative volatility gives a column nothing to work with. A membrane separates on permeability instead, which has no such pinch — the reason pervaporation exists at all.
Unit ops shipped for this vertical
Selective permeation to a vapour permeate — crosses an azeotrope distillation cannot.
Stream permeate pressure, feed temperature and retentate water content from the skid's OPC-UA server into this flowsheet's twin comparison — a membrane losing selectivity shows as a widening gap from the solved retentate long before a lab sample confirms it.
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- ✓Crosses the 89 mol% ethanol-water azeotrope
- ✓Selective permeation, not a relative-volatility split
- ✓No entrainer and no second column