Water Adsorbent from SBE for Dehydration of Ethanol Water Mixture

SBE is a waste from palm oil refinery it is normally dumped into landfill. Ethanol is an alternative fuel and it must be anhydrous to be used in petrol driven engine. In this study, water adsorbent to dehydrate the azeotrope mixture of ethanol-water was synthesised from SBE using modified fusion method.The synthesised water adsorbent was characterized using XRD, FESEM-EDX,ICP-MS and surface area and porosity analyser. The added alumina, aging time, aging temperature, added KOH, added water and fusion temperatureaffecting the water-uptake were studied using OVAT technique followed by structured full multilevel factorial DOE method. Lastly, the synthesised and commercial water adsorbent was used to dehydrate azeotrope mixture of ethanol-water in bench top adsorption apparatus to produce dehydrated ethanol. The performance of synthesised water adsorbent was approximately 66% of the commercial water adsorbent in terms of breakthrough time. This study showed that low cost water adsorbent can be produced from spent bleaching earth using modified fusion method and was able to dehydrate ethanol-water mixture more than 99% weight ethanol to be used as bio-fuel in petrol driven engine.