Progress in Filtration and Separation

Chapter Four

Pervaporation

Bart Van der Bruggen,  and Patricia Luis     Department of Chemical Engineering, Laboratory of Applied Physical Chemistry and Environmental Technology, KU Leuven, Leuven, Belgium

Abstract

This chapter describes the fundamentals and applications of pervaporation as an advanced, energy-intensive separation system. Pervaporation has been developed in the 1980s and has by now matured as a state-of-the-art technology, particularly in some application areas. This is related to the availability of suitable membrane materials and their ability for differential transport, leading to separation between individual compounds in a feed mixture. An overview is given of currently available membranes, polymeric as well as ceramic and hybrid, ...