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Novel Nanofiltration Membranes for the Separation of Solvent/Oil Mixtures--Membrane Technology and Research, Inc., 1360 Willow Road, Suite 103, Menlo Park, CA 94025-1516; 650-328-2228
Dr. J. G. Wijmans, Principal Investigator
Ms. E. G. Weiss, Business Official
DOE Grant No. DE-FG03-98ER82617
Amount: $750,000
In the chemical processing industry, the separation of organic mixtures by distillation is a process that uses huge amounts of energy. In many of these distillation processes, small molecules are separated from large ones, such as solvents from oils. The use of nanofiltration membranes could save large amounts of energy, but current membranes are not resistant to organic solutions, or the fluxes through them are too low for an economical process. This project will develop composite nanofiltration membranes for which a thin, nonporous selective polymer layer is coated onto a microporous support. The thin layer will result in high fluxes and all materials used will be resistant to organic solvents. In Phase I, the permeation properties of polyacetylene membranes were evaluated with a variety of organic solvents and solvent/oil mixtures. These novel membranes had very high fluxes and good rejections of oil components for many of the applications. For solvent/oil systems for which the polyacetylene membranes showed only moderate rejections, two alternative selective materials were identified. The fluxes of these membranes were an order of magnitude higher than those of the best commercially available membranes with similar rejections. In Phase II, the solvent-resistant nanofiltration membranes will be scaled up to modules for laboratory tests, followed by field tests. A petroleum refinery and an engineering and construction company will test the modules at their sites.
Commercial Applications and other Benefits as described by the awardee: For a 50,000-barrel/day oil deasphalting plant, an economic analysis has shown that the new membranes can provide annual savings of $4.5 million and a payback time of less than a year. The membranes also could be used to harvest valuable vegetable proteins from grain by solvent extraction--a 5-million lb/year operation could generate nearly $6 million/year in net revenues, with a payback time less than 2 years.