A major breakthrough in the separation of ethane ethylene

On October 29th, I learned from Taiyuan University of Technology that Science, the world's top academic journal, published the research paper “Taiyuan University of Technology as the first unit” on October 26th, “The metal organic framework with iron-peroxide anion sites is used for Ethane/ethylene separation. The research results not only achieved the ethane-ethylene adsorption reversal, but also prepared a high-efficiency ethane adsorbent, which can be used to separate polymerized ethylene from different concentrations of ethane-ethylene mixture.

The research results were completed under the leadership of Professor Li Jinping, Vice President of Taiyuan University of Technology, and the Institute of Chemistry and Chemical Engineering. Li Jinping said in an interview that the technical level of ethylene production is an important indicator of the development level of a country's petrochemical industry. The industrial preparation is carried out by pyrolysis of ethane, and the product is a mixture of ethane and ethylene. In the industry, a multi-step multi-stage cryogenic rectification separation technique is commonly used, and the mixture is separated to obtain an industrial standard ethylene having a purity of 99.95% or more. The process consumes a lot of energy, and about 75% of the cost of ethylene is used in this process.

For the first time in the world, Prof. Li Jinping used oxygen molecules to combine with unsaturated vacancies in Fe-MOF materials to effectively block the interaction of unsaturated metal vacancies with π bonds between ethylene, significantly reducing the amount of ethylene adsorbed. Meanwhile, new The Fe-O2 group can exhibit stronger adsorption affinity to ethane, achieve the purpose of adsorbing ethane stronger than ethylene, and achieve the purpose of selectively removing ethylene ethane. This achievement not only subtly realizes ethane. - Ethylene adsorption reversal, also produced the most efficient ethane selective adsorbent to date, so that different concentrations of ethane ethylene mixture can be separated in one step to obtain polymer grade ethylene. More importantly, this simple and clever idea is expected to be applied to other In MOFs, a new way is opened for the selection of ethane ethylene separation adsorbents.

Li Jinping introduced the main highlights of the current research. First, it was found that the MOF containing iron-superoxide sites has stronger adsorption capacity for ethane than ethylene. The second is to achieve high efficiency separation at room temperature and pressure of 99.99% purity. Ethylene. Their research team has prepared a new type of MOF material, and found that Fe-O2 can adsorb ethane activity according to neutron powder diffraction and theoretical calculations. MOF is a pore structure, and ethylene and ethane molecules can be well Pass through it, increasing the probability of adsorption.

In recent years, the ethylene industry is still in a period of rapid development. As the world's second largest ethylene producer, China's ethylene production and yield have also increased. In 2017, China's ethylene production was 18.463 million tons, and the average ethylene yield was 32.9%. In the year, with the completion of China's large-scale new ethylene plant, coupled with the momentum of coal-to-olefin production capacity, ethylene production capacity will be released. Industry insiders said that the promotion and application of this research will revolutionize the development of China's ethylene industry. Sexual influence.