MadSci Network: Engineering
Query:

Subject: Why not extract ethanol using butane instead of distilling from water?

Date: Mon Mar 31 16:25:59 2008
Posted by Gregory Bloom
Grade level: nonaligned School: No school entered.
City: Denver State/Province: CO Country: USA
Area of science: Engineering
ID: 1207005959.Eg
Message:

Ethanol is miscible with alkanes, like butane.  Why not float a layer of butane
over a fermented wine having ~10% ethanol, allowing some of the ethanol to
migrate into the butane, then distill the butane, leaving ethanol?  Butane has a
much lower heat of vaporization than water, so it seems like a repeated (or
continuous) extraction of ethanol using butane would be much more
energy-efficient than boiling the water-ethanol mixture to distill.


Re: Why not extract ethanol using butane instead of distilling from water?

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