I-Corps: Solid-state sorbents for olefin-paraffin separations

这个i-corps项目的更广泛的影响/商业潜力来自于显著降低分离烯烃和烷烃气体所需的能源。通过对现有精馏工艺的补充或替代，该技术可应用于粗制烯烃产品的提纯。这一应用的实施将使全球能源消耗减少约0.3%，相当于节省数十亿美元的经济成本，以及与减少污染电源的电力需求相关的环境节约。这项技术也可用于从聚合物和特种化学品生产的废液中回收烯烃。在这里实施将降低总体生产成本和“废”烯烃的燃烧，带来相关的经济和环境影响，以及更广泛的影响，如让消费者更广泛地获得高质量的聚合物和特种化学品产品。这项技术还可以应用于特种二烯烃原料的分离，降低这些二烯烃及其相关产品的生产成本，增加工业界和学术界创新和多样化特种聚合物产品范围的机会，增加消费者的选择和生活质量。I-Corps项目旨在研究用于分离烯烃和石蜡气体的固态吸附剂的商业潜力。以前，人们开发了一种新的设计烯烃脱附剂的策略。对这些材料的概念验证研究表明，它们可以达到大约600：1的烯烃/烷烃选择性，使它们成为这种分离的最具选择性的已知固态材料。这些材料在干燥条件下工作，并能抵抗乙炔污染。这些特性克服了以前研究的需要水的技术的关键限制(这极大地增加了工程的复杂性，并阻止了与现有蒸馏过程的集成)，并且受到乙炔的污染(乙炔会毒害吸附剂，使该过程对长期操作无效)。这个i-Corps项目将确定这种材料的最佳开发商业化途径，以及将得到最好的烯烃/烷烃分离系统的客户。

The broader impacts/commercial potential of this I-corps project is derived from significantly lowering the energy required to separate olefin and paraffin gases. This technology could find application in purifying raw olefin products by supplementing or replacing the existing distillation process. Implementation to this application would reduce global energy consumption by approximately 0.3%, equating to economic savings of billions of dollars and environmental savings associated with reduced electricity demand from polluting power sources. This technology could also be used to recover olefins from the waste streams of polymer and specialty chemical production. Implementation here would reduce overall production costs and the burning of the 'waste' olefins, with associated economic and environmental effects and broader impacts such as making high-quality polymer and specialty chemical products more widely available to consumers. This technology could also find application in the separation of specialty di-olefin feedstocks, reducing the production costs of these di-olefins and related products, with flow on benefits of increasing the accessibility of industry and academia to innovating and diversifying the range of specialty polymer products, increasing consumer choice and quality of life.This I-Corps project is to investigate the commercialization potential of solid-state sorbents for separating olefin and paraffin gases. Previously, a new strategy was developed for designing olefin sorbents. Proof-of-concept investigations of these materials showed that they could achieve olefin/paraffin selectivities of approximately 600:1, making them the most selective known solid-state materials for this separation by an order of magnitude. These materials operate under dry conditions and are resistant to acetylene fouling. These properties overcome key limitations of previously investigated technologies which require water (which greatly increases the complexity of the engineering and prevents integration with the existing distillation process), and are contaminated by acetylene (which poisons sorbents and renders the process ineffective for long-term operations). This I-Corps project will identify the best developmental commercialization pathway for this material, and the customers who will be best served by the resulting olefin/paraffin separation system.