Q & A > Question Details
Fusel oil is generated in Crude Methanol purification/distillation. It has about 50% water and balance is various alcohols. To use it as a burner fuel is very taxing as the mass flow rate is very high compared to the fuel heat value.
The question is - How can this mixture be concentrated in an economic manner such that the water component is removed? This concentrated Fusel oil shall have much higher heat value and it shall improve burner firing efficiency.
 
Answers
31/01/2014 A: Yashvardhan Jain, Yashvardhan Industries, yvindustries@gmail.com
You can dry the Fusel Oil to about 10% moisture content simply by adding saturated salt solution to it, stirring the mixture and allow it to settle for a day. Water along with some amount of lower alcohols such as as Ethanol, 1-Propanol will settle down into the aqueous layer while fusel oil will float right on top of it. You can then decant the organic layer and dry it to 1.2% by using Molecular Sieves UOP-3A-1/16. Thereafter if you distill it, all the water will come out along with some amount of Ethanol, 1-Propanol and Butanol leaving almost 90% of the mixture entirely dry.
If there is an alternate to remove water from Fusel Oil cheaply, I would be most interested in knowing.
31/08/2007 A: Amarjit Bakshi, Refining Hydrocarbon Technologies LLC, abakshi@rhtgulfcoast.com
The best solution for this problem is to install a double or triple effect evaporator system under vacuum with a low heat source to separate water from alcohols/aldehydes/ketones. After removing the water the concentrate of hydrocarbons can be used as fuel
Refining Hydrocarbon Technologies would be happy to provide technical services in this area to meet your goals.
Please see the www.rhtgulfcoast.com web site for biodiesel and ETBE production which provides enhancement in Biofuels technology by rejecting water from the wet ethanol feed rather than using an xpensive dry ethanol option.......