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Molecular Solution Behaviour of an Intermediate Biofuel Feedstock: Acetone–Butanol–Ethanol (ABE)
Author(s) -
Zehentbauer Florian M.,
Kiefer Johannes
Publication year - 2015
Publication title -
chemphyschem
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.016
H-Index - 140
eISSN - 1439-7641
pISSN - 1439-4235
DOI - 10.1002/cphc.201500835
Subject(s) - acetone , butanol , biofuel , chemistry , ternary operation , raw material , yield (engineering) , azeotrope , alcohol , molecule , ethanol , organic chemistry , distillation , materials science , waste management , computer science , engineering , metallurgy , programming language
Abstract Mixtures of acetone, butanol, and ethanol (ABE) are common intermediate products in the production of biofuels via biomass fermentation. Their separation to yield, for example, bio‐butanol, is still difficult due to the lack of a fundamental understanding of these mixtures at the molecular level. In order to bridge this gap, a detailed analysis of characteristic features of the vibrational spectrum is carried out. A systematic study of the binary solutions of acetone with ethanol and butanol does not only reveal a universal behaviour at the molecular level when acetone is mixed with short‐chain alcohols, it also shows that the phenomena at a length scale between the molecules and in the macroscopic solution need to be taken into account to understand the structure–property relationships. The size of self‐associated molecule clusters seems to determine whether or not a system exhibits an azeotrope. When a second alcohol is added to an acetone/alcohol solution, no additional non‐idealities are induced, which is advantageous for modelling ternary ABE mixtures and for improving their processing in the production of biofuels.