Azeo-Sep™ is a pervaporation process.  Its prime functions are to easily, efficiently and economically separate compounds that are difficult to separate by other means. The main markets for this product are chemical, petrochemical, pharmaceutical industries and synthetic fuel producers.

Hybrid Azeo-Sep™ Configuration

Because of the limitations of conventional distillation, Azeo-Sep™ is an excellent add-on system to increase the profitability of traditional distillation processes. Distillation is a conventional fluid mixture separation technology that can separate components with different volatilities and markedly different boiling points (e.g. benzene/toluene mixture). However, distillation is extremely costly when concentration of the separating components is similar in the liquid and vapor phase, called the azeotropic point (e.g. ethanol/water or IPA/water mixtures).  Distillation alone cannot perform any further separation beyond the azeotropic point.

Azeo-Sep™ hybrid units can now be utilized in conjunction with conventional distillation columns to extract greater quantities of water and provide higher purity chemicals and fuels.  A portion of the overhead product from the column passes through the Azeo-Sep™ membrane modules. In doing so, the azeotrope is broken and a pure product is produced.

The permeate can then be returned to the column/molecular sieve for “polishing” or left on the Azeo/Sep. This process is used to de-bottleneck the overall dehydration process by achieving the desired level of separation. It has the added benefit of not displacing pre-existing technology, making KmX technology less threatening to established players.