Chemical manufacturers consume a massive amount of energy each year separating and refining feedstocks to make a wide variety of products including gasoline, plastics and food.
Chemical manufacturers consume a massive amount of energy each year separating and refining feedstocks to make a wide variety of products including gasoline, plastics and food.
In a bid to reduce the amount of energy used in chemical separations, researchers at the Georgia Institute of Technology are working on membranes that could separate chemicals without using energy-intensive distillation processes.
“The vast majority of separations out in the field in a variety of industries are thermally-driven systems such as distillation, and because of that we spend an inordinate amount of energy on these separation processes – something like 10 to 15 percent of the global energy budget is spent on chemical separations,” said Ryan Lively, an associate professor in Georgia Tech’s School of Chemical & Biomolecular Engineering. “Separations that avoid the use of heat and a chemical phase-change are much less energy intense. In practice, using them could produce a 90 percent reduction in energy cost.”
Plastic membranes are already able to separate certain molecules based on size and other differences, such as in seawater desalination. But until now, most membranes have been unable to withstand harsh solvent-rich chemical streams while also performing challenging separation tasks.
Continue reading at Georgia Tech.
Image via Georgia Tech.
