SBIR-STTR Award

This Small Business Innovation Research Phase I project seeks to establish the feasibility of carbon-ceramic membranes for the highly difficult molecular separation of olefin/paraffin mixtures. Carbon molecular sieves are porous materials that possess small selective pores distributed in two to three relatively narrow size ranges that can provide the resulting membranes with high selectivity for olefin/paraffin analog separations. This project will develop a novel process to make new rigid carbon-ceramic structures that are chemically and thermally stable, and thereby, resistant to plasticization induced by absorption of hydrocarbons. This project is expected to lead to the development of carbon membranes with sufficient olefin permeance and olefin/paraffin selectivity to yield an efficient process to recover olefins that are currently flared in polyolefin plant vent gases. Moreover, this research is expected to increase the understanding of carbon-ceramic membranes and their potential for use in an array of chemically and thermally challenging gas separations that are not possible with conventional polymeric membranes. The broader/commercial impact of this project will be the large economic potential associated with the successful commercial use of the new carbon membranes in molecular separations, considering the commercial value of the recovered olefins, and the large volumes of olefins and polyolefins consumed annually in the United States. If these inherently stable new carbon membranes are successfully developed, they could be used as an energy-efficient separation method in variety of large industrial applications including olefin/paraffin separations for monomer production at steam crackers and recovery of olefins from fluid catalytic cracker off-gases in refineries. With the appropriate membrane materials, membrane-based separations offer the advantage of substantially reduced energy consumption compared to other separation methods including absorption and distillation

This Small Business Innovation Research Phase II project proposes to continue the development of carbon-ceramic membranes with excellent propylene/propane separation performance. The membranes serve as the enabling technology to be used in an environmentally benign and economically viable membrane process to separate propylene from propane for a variety of important petrochemical and refining processes. These composite membranes contain thin selective layers of a newly-developed microporous carbon material. The rigid structure of the material confers the membranes with exceptional resistance to plasticization. This allows the membranes to retain high mixed-gas selectivities at challenging industrial conditions. The mixed-gas propylene/propane selectivities and stability of the membranes achieved in Phase I work are far superior to those of previously examined polymer and facilitated transport membranes under industrially relevant conditions. In Phase II work, membranes developed in Phase I will be further optimized, and then used to produce prototype commercial-size modules for propylene/propane separations. In addition, this research is expected to increase general understanding of carbon-ceramic membranes and their potential for use in an array of other chemically and thermally challenging gas separations that are not possible with conventional polymeric membranes. The broader impact/commercial potential of this project will be the use of the new carbon membranes for propylene recovery from polypropylene and propylene derivative reactor purge streams. This technology has important economic potential, considering the large volumes of propylene, polypropylene and other propylene derivatives produced annually in the petrochemical industry. With successful development and demonstration of the membrane-based processes, their potentially much larger applications include propylene/propane separations for monomer production at steam crackers and recovery of propylene from fluid catalytic cracker off-gases in refineries. The cost of making ceramic membranes is higher than that of polymeric membranes, but the savings from lower process energy requirements will easily outweigh the increased membrane costs. If successful, the new membranes will make membrane-based olefin/paraffin separations technically and economically attractive for use in conjunction with, or in place of, distillation