BACKGROUNDButanol produced by fermentation from waste biomass suffers from low final concentration. Separation of butanol from its dilute aqueous solution is of significant importance. Among various separation methods, pervaporation has been proved to be one of the most promising methods for the butanol-water system and developing pervaporation membranes with high performance is therefore of interest. RESULTSA high performance interpenetrating polymer network (IPN) polyurethane (PU) pervaporation membrane was obtained, giving membrane selectivity of 130.3 with butanol permeability of 2.5 x 10(4) Barrer at 60 degrees C. Both membrane selectivity and butanol permeability increased with feed temperature at temperatures up to 60 degrees C and then decreased. CONCLUSIONHydroxyl-terminated polybutadiene (HTPB) based PU was used in pervaporation recovery of butanol. Pervaporation performance was obviously improved by formation of IPN structure. The pervaporation performance was studied using the solution-diffusion model and the mechanism of performance improvement was also studied. (c) 2014 Society of Chemical Industry