Scientists Develop Cheap Filter That Could Slash Oil Refining Energy Use by 32%

Scientists have made a surprising discovery that could slash the amount of energy used in oil refining by eliminating part of the high-temperature heating process required to separate the fractions of crude oil. The scientific breakthrough has found a simple and inexpensive way to separate crude oil molecules through a polymer membrane, radically different from previous attempts to fractionate crude oil via membranes.

In previous studies of membrane-based fractionations, scientists believed a selective layer should be coated onto the surface to help separate molecules. But these additional-layer membranes are expensive to make and potentially defective when produced at scale. So the researchers from the Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology KAIST and the Georgia Institute of Technology took a radically different approach.