Further hydrogenation of furfural alcohol, for which isopropyl alcohol (IPA) is used as the solvent, produces both 1,2- and 1,5-PDO. The hydrogenation of the ecofriendly bio-product furfural produces furfural alcohol. 1,5-PDO is used in place of 1,6-hexanediol and 1,4-butanediol and also has a huge market potential, which is projected to reach a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 5.5% between 20. In fact, the global market for 1,2-HDO is expected to reach US$ 54 million by 2024 from US$ 40 million in 2019. Thus, these diols have huge market potential. Two important diols in cosmetics are 1,5-pentanediol (1,5-PDO) and 1,2-hexanediol (1,2-HDO). 3–6 The worldwide value of the cosmetic market was US$ 507.8 billion in 2018 and is projected to increase to US$ 758.4 billion by 2025. 1,2 α,ω-Diols have a broad range of applications in various industries, for example, as monomers for polymer synthesis, such as polyester and polyurethane, bio-fuels, in pharmaceuticals as solvents, and as moisturizer components in cosmetics. Introduction Diols contain two hydroxyl groups per molecule and are very important industrial chemicals because they can be synthesized from bio-resources such as lignin, making them promising renewable materials. Both the hydrophilic and organophilic membranes exhibited promising separation performance at elevated operating conditions, showing their great potential for purification of α,β and α,ω-diols. Long term stability analysis found that both hydrophilic (PVA) and organophilic (PDMS) membranes retained excellent pervaporation output over 18 days' continuous exposure to the feed. In the organophilic pervaporation separation of the 1,5-PDO/IPA feed having a 9 : 1 weight ratio of components, the PDMS membrane prepared with a molar ratio of TEOS alkoxy groups to PDMS hydroxyl groups of 70 yielded a flux of 0.12 kg m −2 h −1 and separation factor of 17 638 at 40 ☌. For 1,2-HDO/water separation using a feed having a 1 : 4 weight ratio of 1,2-HDO/water, the membrane prepared using 4 vol% glutaraldehyde (GA4) showed the best performance, yielding a flux of 0.59 kg m −2 h −1 and a separation factor of 175 at 40 ☌. Thus, as a core pervaporation process, hydrophilic polyvinyl alcohol (PVA) membranes for the removal of water from 1,2-hexanediol (1,2-HDO) and organophilic polydimethylsiloxane–polysulfone (PDMS–PSF) membranes for the removal of isopropanol from 1,5 pentanediol (1,5-PDO) were employed. Pervaporation separation is considered to be a remarkable energy efficient membrane technology for purification of diols. The distillation-based purification of α,β and α,ω-diols is energy and resource intensive, as well as time consuming.