Applications of dielectric-based sensors in the alcohol refining process and automation integration

Climate change is becoming a major problem worldwide, thus prompting the turn to renewable sources of energy and products, such as biobased alcohols for fuel sources or feedstock for other chemical syntheses. The annual production rate of the prominent biobased alcohol, bioethanol, in the US is 16 billion gallons. Bioethanol is made from fermentation of corn starch or biomass, but this fermentation process leads to byproducts that need to be removed. Distillation and adsorption can help with the separation process, but the timing to regenerate/switch over to a new adsorption column is difficult to determine. Currently, the timing is determined using HPLC to measure the alcohol content, which takes 30-50 minutes and requires active human monitoring. Thus, there is a need to develop devices that can help monitor the distillation process and determine when the adsorption column needs to be switched. Researchers at Purdue University have developed a system and method for use of adsorption to purify biobased alcohol in an automated fashion with an integrated dielectric-based sensor to detect the optimal time to replace the adsorption column. The researchers propose adding the sensor to the rectifier distillate stream

Advantages

-Automated system and method; no human monitoring necessary

-Rapid analysis and only small sample required

-Uses commercial, off-the-shelf automotive flex fuel sensors

Applications

-Development of automated systems for biobased alcohol refinement

TRL: 3

Intellectual Property:

Keywords: Biobased alcohol purification, automated alcohol refinement, adsorption column monitoring, dielectric sensor, flex fuel sensor, bioethanol production, distillation control, solvent separation, process automation, real-time sensing