【Ten Years of Rapid Development in Chemical Processing Equipment】From 1532 to 2024: The development of flexible porous framework materials enables efficient separation of ethane and ethylene

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2024: A year of blooming flowers and joy on the forum **********************【Ten years of progress in chemical engineering equipment】 – Continuous updates and summaries available; feel free to join the discussions at https://bbs.hcbbs.com/thread-3576046-1-1.html (Source: Haichuan Chemical Engineering Forum) ***************** Recently, a series of flexible porous framework materials developed by Yang Qingyuan’s research team at the School of Chemical Engineering at Xi’an Jiaotong University have been shown to enable efficient separation of ethane and ethylene. This research finding was published in the Journal of the American Chemical Society. It is understood that such flexible porous materials exhibit a unique \"gating\" effect on ethane; that is, under the influence of ethane molecules, the material can undergo reversible structural phase transitions between small pores (NP) and large pores (LP). The adsorption ratio of the flexible porous material X-dia-1-Ni0.89Co0.11 for ethane and ethylene is 9.1, which is much higher than that of most solid adsorbent materials reported previously; this confirms that the flexible porous material can selectively identify ethane molecules from a mixture of ethane and ethylene gases. The mechanism of the pore size transformation from small to large pores induced by ethane was elucidated through in-situ variable-pressure powder X-ray diffraction and theoretical simulations. Due to the very similar physicochemical properties of ethane and ethylene, separating these two gases on an industrial scale presents a great challenge. Traditional low-temperature distillation separation processes typically require high pressure and low temperatures, and this approach results in the energy used for purifying olefins such as ethylene accounting for 0.3% of global energy consumption. This study provides a new approach to solving the separation of ethane and ethylene.