Case study · Industrial Manufacturing & Environmental · 2016
Sarnia bioethanol and ABE refinery, three feeds piloted over six months
Petro Sep deployed a hybrid AZEO-SEP®, VOC-SEP®, and AQUA-SEP® plant at a Sarnia, Canada bioethanol and ABE (acetone/butanol/ethanol) refinery. The site is also home to PSC's 'Lean Water' VOC-SEP® pilot, which validated three industrial wastewater feeds over six months.
- Industry
- Industrial Manufacturing & Environmental
- Location
- Sarnia, Ontario, Canada
- Year
- 2016
- Technology deployed
- PV + VP + VMD
Outcomes
The numbers that mattered.
Independently verified at commissioning, tracked in operation.
- Lean Water pilot feeds tested
- 3
- Industrial wastewater from Toronto, Tomlinson, and Chateauguay sites, over six months.
- Clean water recovered as discharge
- 70%
- From the pilot trials. Permit-ready quality.
- Organics recovered as high-BTU fuel
- 95%
- Returned to the process as energy or feedstock.
- Alcohols reduction
- 247 ppm from 31,650 ppm (Toronto)
- Other feeds: Tomlinson 43 from 4,400 ppm; Chateauguay 53 from 108,240 ppm.
01
The Sarnia plant
The site is a small refinery configured for bioethanol and ABE (acetone, butanol, ethanol) production. Petro Sep deployed a hybrid plant skid integrating our three platforms: AZEO-SEP® for solvent dehydration past azeotropes, VOC-SEP® for VOC recovery from process exhaust and aqueous streams, and AQUA-SEP® for high-TDS aqueous separations. One skid, three separation jobs, one operator-training package.
02
The 'Lean Water' pilot
Alongside the production plant, Petro Sep used the Sarnia site for the Lean Water VOC-SEP® pilot. Three industrial wastewater feeds (sourced from Toronto, Tomlinson, and Chateauguay) were run through the pilot over six months. The trial recovered 70% of feed water as permit-ready discharge quality and 95% of organic content as high-BTU fuel returnable to the process. Pre-membrane to post-membrane alcohol reductions: 31,650 to 247 ppm (Toronto), 4,400 to 43 ppm (Tomlinson), and 108,240 to 53 ppm (Chateauguay). The pilot data published with this case study is real and reproducible on a representative feed sample.
03
Outcomes
The hybrid plant has remained in operation since 2016. The Lean Water pilot data is part of PSC's standard sales engineering reference for VOC-SEP® applications on industrial wastewater. Customers evaluating VOC-SEP® for similar streams can request the pilot dataset under NDA.
Gallery
From the field.
Photographs from fabrication, installation, and commissioning.
Industry
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Technology
How Pervaporation works.
Selective separation of liquid mixtures, including the azeotropes that distillation cannot break.
Specs and applications
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