The separation of a toluene/methanol/water ternary mixture is a difficult task due to the toluene/water and toluene/methanol azeotropes. In this article, low-energy pervaporation is proposed for the separation of the ternary azeotrope toluene–methanol–water. This work investigates the effects of feed temperature, feed flow rate, and vacuum on pervaporation and compares the energy consumption of pervaporation with that of distillation. The results showed that at the optimized flow rate of 50 L/h and a permeate side vacuum of 60 kPa at 50 °C, the water and methanol content in the permeate was about 63.2 wt.% and 36.8 wt.%, respectively, the water/ methanol separation factor was 24.04, the permeate flux was 510.7 g/m²·h, the water content in the feed out was reduced from 2.5 wt.% to less than 0.66 wt.%, and the dehydration of toluene methanol could be realized. Without taking into account the energy consumption of pumps and other power equipment, pervaporation requires an energy consumption of 43.53 kW·h to treat 1 ton of raw material, while the energy consumption of distillation to treat 1 ton of raw material is about 261.5 kW·h. Compared to the existing distillation process, the pervaporation process consumes much less energy (about one-sixth of the energy consumption of distillation). There is almost no effect on the surface morphology and chemical composition of the membrane before and after use. The method provides an effective reference for the dehydration of organic solvents from ternary mixtures containing toluene/methanol/water.

Potassium phosphate (K₃PO₄) is a common inorganic compound with broad applications in agriculture and industry. Although the traditional thermal method of preparing K₃PO₄ by reacting phosphoric acid with potassium hydroxide can obtain high-quality products, it consumes a lot of energy and has high costs. This study explores the process of preparing K₃PO₄ by Electrodialysis metathesis (EDM). This process uses sodium phosphate (Na₃PO₄) and potassium chloride (KCl) as raw materials and can prepare K₃PO₄ continuously. Under the optimized conditions (operating voltage of 8 V, 0.35 mol/L Na₃PO₄ and 1.05 mol/L KCl in raw flow with the rate of 30 mL/min), the product purity of K₃PO₄ reaches more than 97%, the energy consumption is 1191 kW·h/t, and the cost is about 8314 CNY/ton. Compared with traditional methods, EDM has the advantages of low cost, simple operation, and high utilization rate. This study shows that EDM technology has significant potential in preparing K₃PO₄.

In this study, the integrated process of reverse osmosis (RO) and electrodialysis (ED) is developed to concentrate the dilute solution of acetic acid (HAc). The key parameters, such as RO pressure, ED voltage, and ED volume ratio, were systematically evaluated and the operation conditions of the processes were optimized. Under an operating pressure of 5 MPa, RO can enrich low-concentration HAc from 1.5 wt.% to 6.5% wt.% and the energy consumption is 0.37 kW·h·kg⁻¹. Next, RO-concentrated water was used as the ED feed and the first ED with a volume ratio of the concentrated to dilute chamber of 1:4 was carried out under the conditions of a flow rate of 30 L/h and an operating voltage of 12 V; the HAc concentration reached 12.50 wt.%. The second ED with a volume ratio of 1:5 made the final HAc concentration reach 19.02 wt.%. This study shows that using RO-concentrated water instead of initial water for the ED process can reduce water energy consumption and cost markedly, and the RO–ED integrated process can efficiently pre-enrich low-concentration HAc aqueous solution, and the enriched HAc concentration meets the requirements for the further distillation of HAc.