(105a) Iron-Containing Carbon Molecular Sieve Membranes for Advanced Olefin/Paraffin Separations

Membrane technology may provide an attractive alternative to traditional thermally driven methods for gas separation. In this work, olefin-selective membranes are described for use in a hybrid membrane-distillation process to retrofit the current distillation process to lower the overall energy usage.

Previous work has shown that carbon molecular sieve (CMS) membranes with rigid structures are promising for olefin/paraffin separation, based on diffusion selectivity, while sorption selectivity has little influence. In this work, integrating Fe²⁺ into polymer precursors was pursued to improve CMS membrane separation properties for advanced olefin/paraffin separations. The choice of Fe²⁺ was based on a combination of factors including olefin selectivity, low cost, and stability against contaminants. Starting materials and processing conditions were investigated in order to explore the impact on CMS membranes separation properties for mixed olefins/paraffins. CMS membranes were made having improved olefins/paraffins separation performance, which will be reported.