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MIXED MATRIX MEMBRANES

A perfect match

Nature Materials volume 17, pages 216–217 (2018)Cite this article

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A metal–organic framework with tailored porosity provides a mixed matrix membrane with excellent performance for natural gas purification and butane isomer separation.

Separation processes are required to isolate or purify industrially useful gases and vapours, but traditional methods based on cryogenic distillation or solvent absorption are highly energy intensive. In contrast, separations using membranes can offer excellent energy efficiency and are being increasingly considered for large-scale processing in the petrochemical industry1. However, membranes with greatly improved performance are required, with structures specifically engineered on the nanoscale in order to be optimized for a particular molecular separation. Writing in Nature Materials, a team of researchers led by William Koros at the Georgia Institute of Technology and Mohamed Eddaoudi of the King Abdullah University of Science and Technology present a hybrid membrane system with a structure that is tailored to provide exceptional performance for both natural gas purification and butane separations2.

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Fig. 1: A hybrid material, composed of RE-fcu-MOF (represented by cubes), and polymer 6FDA-DAM (represented by the blue box) fabricated into a hollow fibre membrane (right), efficiently removes CO2 and H2S from natural gas (CH4) by size selectivity.

References

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  1. EaStCHEM, School of Chemistry, University of Edinburgh, Edinburgh, UK

    Neil B. McKeown

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  1. Neil B. McKeown
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Correspondence to Neil B. McKeown.

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McKeown, N.B. A perfect match. Nature Mater 17, 216–217 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41563-018-0029-1

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