8. Bioethanol Production from Molasses by Pervaporation Membrane Bioreactor

Bioethanol is a clean and green energy source that can be produced from fermented biomass. Environmental regulations require bioethanol to be blended with gasoline. Thus researchers and producers accelerate ethanol production from biobased sources and waste. There are many bioethanol production plants all over the world. Ethanol production steps consist of pretreatment, fermentation, and deep purification steps. The impurities in fuel ethanol should be below the limit values. Therefore, some specific purification techniques are required. The major production drawback is the complicated separation step that covers a very large portion of the production cost. Hence researchers place great emphasis on the separation step. For some time, the separation–fermentation hybrid system has garnered much attention owing to its economical and environmental features. The pervaporation membrane bioreactor (PVMBR) is a pervaporation-coupled fermentation hybrid process. In PVMBR, ethanol is selectively removed from the fermentation broth.