ENHANCE ETHANOL PURITY WITH TEA POWDER ADSORBTIVE DISTILLATION.

Chemical Engineering

The depletion of oil reserves and the increasing need for fuel have become a problem in the supply of energy sources. One of the efforts to maintain the availability of fuel is to use ethanol fuel grade as an alternative fuel. Continuous adsorption is one method that can purify ethanol up to a concentration of 99.5% (v/v). This study aims to increase the purity of ethanol using adsorbent Tea Powder with a continuous adsorption method. The feed used is technical ethanol with a concentration of 20%, 40%, 50%, 60%, 80% (v/v). The equipment used is a continuous adsorption apparatus with a fixed bed column. Parameters measured during the process were Brix Percentage, Refractive Index, Density, Ethanol concentration (V/V %) and Temperature. Variations carried out were variations in concentration of ethanol in feed and the type of adsorbent height. The best continuous adsorption process using tea powder adsorbent with the ethanol product concentration rated up to 96% on pycnometer analysis and 99.33% on GC-MS analysis. While using tea powder adsorbent, the best results were 88 to 96% with the highest ethanol product concentration of 96% in the pycnometer analysis

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