Improving Ethanol Purity by Methanol Adsorption Using MCM-41: A Study of Kinetics and Thermodynamics for Industrial Applications

One of the by-products of the fermentation process that produces ethanol, which is mostly utilized in industry and food, is methanol. For methanol adsorption in batch operations, mixed amines modified (MCM-41) was utilized. A batch adsorption technique loaded with MCM-41 sorbent was used in the study to separate methanol from ethanol. This study used methanol at varying initial concentrations (40-80 mg/L). As a result, the effect of temperature, duration of adsorption, amount of adsorbent and initial concentration of pollutant in the field of ethanol alcohol purification using MCM-41 was investigated through the adsorption mechanism. In addition, first and pseudo-second order kinetic adsorption models have been used to remove methanol pollutants from MCM-41 adsorbents with the aim of analyzing surface adsorption mechanisms. Additionally, a comprehensive analysis of the surface adsorption mechanism has been done. The models of Temkin, Freundlich, and Langmuir isotherms were applied. Several mass transfer models (Weber and Morris, Bingham's liquid film and Burt's diffusion) have been investigated on porous adsorbents to gain a deeper insight into the mechanism of pollutant mass transfer during surface adsorption. This study demonstrates that methanol adsorption from ethanol using MCM-41 achieves optimal efficiency at 60°C and an adsorbent dose of 0.5 g after 90 min. The results show that the process is spontaneous and follows a pseudo-second-order kinetic model, suggesting great potential for ethanol purification in industrial processes. The results showed that a mesoporous adsorbent known as MCM-41 is able to efficiently extract methanol from ethanol solution.