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METAL–ORGANIC FRAMEWORKS

An efficient nanosieve

Nature Materials volume 17, pages 1057–1058 (2018)Cite this article

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A rigid and easily scalable metal–organic framework is shown to be among the most efficient materials for separating ethylene from ethane.

Energy supply, consumption, and generation are among the biggest challenges humankind faces. Depletion of natural resources and the undeniable relationship between energy generation and global warming call for immediate action. In the long term, green energy sources such as solar energy will inevitably take over from current technologies, but this will take a number of decades1. In addition to decreasing emissions of greenhouse gases, energy efficiency will play a significant role in enabling sustainable development2. The energy used in manufacturing accounts for around 55% of overall energy consumption, and the production of base chemicals is one of the most energy-intensive industries. This is because chemical separation units require large energy inputs, accounting for 10–15% of the world’s energy consumption, and are therefore responsible for millions of tonnes of CO2 emitted every year3. Separating molecules that differ in size by less than 10% is not easy: imagine how much time (hence energy) it would take to separate, by hand, millions of marbles of 10 and 9 mm diameter. Now imagine only making one mistake every 200 marbles (if a purity of 99.5% is targeted). It would be much easier to have a sieve with a regular size of 9.5 mm through which only the smaller marbles would pass. Now, writing in Nature Materials, Banglin Chen, Wei Zhou and co-workers4 describe a molecular sieve that efficiently discriminates ethane from ethylene, two molecules that differ in size by 0.01 nm. This is a remarkable scientific achievement (to date only a few materials with this specific pore size are known5,6,7) that may have important technological implications.

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Fig. 1: Schematic representation of the separation of ethane/ethylene mixtures.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. King Abdullah University of Science and Technology, KAUST Catalysis Center (KCC), Advanced Catalytic Materials, Thuwal, Saudi Arabia

    Anastasiya Bavykina & Jorge Gascon

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  1. Anastasiya Bavykina
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  2. Jorge Gascon
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Correspondence to Jorge Gascon.

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Bavykina, A., Gascon, J. An efficient nanosieve. Nature Mater 17, 1057–1058 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41563-018-0223-1

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