Hydrophobic *BEA-Type Zeolite Membranes on Tubular Silica Supports for Alcohol/Water Separation by Pervaporation

Hydrophobic pure-silica *BEA-type zeolite membranes with large pores were prepared on tubular silica supports by hydrothermal synthesis using a secondary growth method and were applied to the separation of alcohol/water mixtures by pervaporation (PV), an alternative energy-efficient process for production of biofuels. Amorphous pure-silica tubular silica supports, free of Al atoms, were used for preparing the membranes. In this study, the effects of the synthesis conditions, such as the H2O/SiO2 and NH4F/SiO2 ratios in the synthetic gel, on the membrane formation process and separation performance were systematically investigated. The successfully prepared dense and continuous membranes exhibited alcohol selectivity and high flux for the separation of ethanol/water and butanol/water mixtures. The pure-silica *BEA membranes obtained under optimal conditions (0.08SiO2:0.5TEAOH:0.7NH4F:8H2O) showed high PV performance with a separation factor of 229 and a flux of 0.62 kg&middot
m&minus
2&middot
h&minus
1 for a 1 wt % n-butanol/water mixture at 318 K. This result was attributed to the hydrophobicity and large pore size of the pure-silica *BEA membrane. This was the first successful synthesis of hydrophobic large-pore zeolite membranes on tubular supports with alcohol selectivity, and the obtained results could provide new insights into the research on hydrophobic membranes with high permeability.