Engineering Carbon Molecular Sieve Hollow Fiber Membranes for Olefin/Paraffin Separation

The separation of olefins from paraffins is important in the petrochemical industry. The current dominant technology, cryogenic distillation, is highly energy intensive. A hybrid membrane-distillation process is proposed to retrofit the current platform.

Carbon molecular sieve (CMS) membranes are able to overcome the polymer upper bound of the productivity-efficiency tradeoff. Making the novel carbon membrane into the asymmetric hollow fiber form is of great interest as well as tailoring the microscopic molecular sieving microstructure.

Last year we reported on improved materials for the separation of ethylene and ethane. Major advancements made in the past year in both membrane materials and new processes using these materials have led to new discoveries that will be reported during this presentation. These unique olefins-selective membrane materials will enable increased energy savings in the olefins production units.