Pervaporation is effective for dilute solutions containing trace or minor amounts of the component to be removed. Based on this, hydrophilic membranes are used for dehydration of alcohols containing small amounts of water and hydrophobic membranes are used for removal/recovery of trace amounts of organics from aqueous solutions.
Pervaporation is an efficient energy conserving alternative to processes such as distillation and evaporation. It allows the exchange of two phases without direct contact.
Examples include solvent dehydration: dehydrating the ethanol/water and isopropanol/water azeotropes, continuous ethanol removal from yeast fermentors, continuous water removal from condensation reactions such as esterifications to enhance conversion and rate of the reaction, membrane introduction mass spectrometry, removing organic solvents from industrial waste waters, combination of distillation and pervaporation/vapour permeation, and concentration of hydrophobic flavour compounds in aqueous solutions (using hydrophobic membranes).
Recently, a number of organophilic pervaporation membranes have been introduced to the market. Organophilic pervaporation membranes can be used for the separation of organic-organic mixtures, e.g.: reduction of the aromatics content in refinery streams, breaking of azeotropes, purification of extraction media, purification of product stream after extraction, and purification of organic solvents.