Polytriazole membranes with ultrathin tunable selective layer for crude oil fractionation.

Chisca, Stefan; Musteata, Valentina-Elena; Zhang, Wen; Vasylevskyi, Serhii; Falca, Gheorghe; Abou-Hamad, Edy; Emwas, Abdul-Hamid; Altunkaya, Mustafa et al. · Science · 2022

basic_science · Level V

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Abstract

The design of materials and their manufacture into membranes that can handle industrial conditions and separate complex nonaqueous mixtures are challenging. We report a versatile strategy to fabricate polytriazole membranes with 10-nanometer-thin selective layers containing subnanometer channels for the separation of hydrocarbons. The process involves the use of the classical nonsolvent-induced phase separation method and thermal cross-linking. The membrane selectivity can be tuned to the lower end of the typical nanofiltration range (200 to 1000 gram mole<sup>-1</sup>). The polytriazole membrane can enrich up to 80 to 95% of the hydrocarbon content with less than 10 carbon atoms (140 gram mole<sup>-1</sup>). These membranes preferentially separate paraffin over aromatic components, making them suitable for integration in hybrid distillation systems for crude oil fractionation.