Aromatic-aliphatic hydrocarbon separation with oriented monolayer polyhedral membrane.

Sun, Hao; Wang, Naixin; Xu, Yinghui; Wang, Fengkai; Lu, Jun; Wang, Huanting; An, Quan-Fu · Science · 2024

basic_science · Level V

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Abstract

Aromatic<i>-</i>aliphatic hydrocarbon separation is a challenging but important industrial process. Pervaporation membrane technology has the potential for separating these mixtures. We developed an oriented monolayer polyhedral (OMP) membrane that consists of a monolayer of ordered polyhedral particles and is anchored by hyperbranched polymers. It contains a high density of straight, selective nanochannels, enabling the preferential transport of aromatic molecules. Compared with traditional mixed-matrix membranes with random orientations, the OMP membrane improves the pervaporation separation index for aromatic-aliphatic hydrocarbon mixtures with C<sub>6</sub> and C<sub>7</sub> compounds, surpassing the performance of existing membranes by 3 to 10 times. This high performance demonstrates the potential of OMP membranes for hydrocarbon molecular separation and their application in the value-added separation of naphtha feedstocks.