Date of Graduation
12-2016
Document Type
Thesis
Degree Name
Bachelor of Science in Chemical Engineering
Degree Level
Undergraduate
Department
Chemical Engineering
Advisor/Mentor
Dr. D. Keith Roper
Abstract
The U.S. Department of Energy suggests that ca. 40% of the total energy consumed in the chemical and refining industries is used for distillation.1 One potentially energy efficient alternative is pervaporation, a membrane separation process that uses differences in solvent permeability and vaporization rates to encourage mixture separation. Pervaporation has become a valuable tool in the processes of producing biofuels, recovering water, and removing solvent.2,3 However, implementation has been hindered by heating the feed to the membrane and cooling the unpermeated retentate to increase membrane throughput at a higher energy cost. Preliminary research has shown that locally heating the membrane through plasmonic heating has the potential to reduce energy consumption drastically and promote the implementation of pervaporation.4
Citation
Austin, T. (2016). Plasmonic Pervaporation for Sustainable Mixture Separation. Chemical Engineering Undergraduate Honors Theses Retrieved from https://scholarworks.uark.edu/cheguht/95