(77d) Enabling Widespread Use of Microporous Membranes for Challenging Organic Solvent Separations

The industrial production of
chemicals and fuels relies heavily on established separation technologies such
as distillation, crystallization, and absorption. Currently, these thermally-driven
separations consume anywhere up to 50% of the total energy required for the
production processes associated with fuels, chemicals, pharmaceuticals, and
water. By avoiding these energy-intensive phase changes during separation, new
low energy, low carbon emission separations could be realized. Membranes are
one such technology that have been developed to meet these needs. Membrane
separations can utilize as little as 10% of the energy required for
thermal-based desalination technologies, as seen in membrane-based water
desalination. The earliest filtration membranes were able to differentiate
between molecules of 10−100× difference in size; today, membranes can
separate molecules with just 1.05−1.5× difference in size. Indeed,
membrane technology is now the state of the art for seawater desalination
facilities and is also competitive in certain gas separations such as air
separation, hydrogen recovery, and natural gas processing and is emerging as a
leading technology for olefin/paraffin separations. Membrane-based organic
solvent separations could revolutionize the field of hydrocarbon separations by
enabling new low energy, low carbon emission technologies. Microporous
materials are potential game changers for these challenging separations due to
their ability to provide superb size and shape discrimination; however,
large-scale application of these materials has yet to be adopted. This talk
will cover the current state of the art in the separation of similarly sized
organic molecules via microporous membranes, challenges and strategies for
scaling out these materials into real devices, and critical needs in this
emerging area of membrane science.