Preferential Adsorption and Selective Permeation of Alcohol/Hydrocarbon Mixtures in Reverse Osmosis

Abstract

In binary mixtures of alcohols and hydrocarbons there are two types of reverse osmosis performances. These are selective permeation of the alcohol and selective permeation of the hydrocarbon. Liquid chromatography results have been used to predict the selective permeation of reverse osmosis membranes where the membranes may be difficult to fabricate as well as to determine performance limits in terms of separation. These results are of interest for the production of oxygenated fuel blending agents where specifications require the removal of unreacted methanol for further processing and distillation is not viable.