Hydrophobic polyamide nanofilms provide rapid transport for crude oil separation

• DOI: 10.1126/science.abq0598
• Publication Date: 2022-09-29T17:58:57Z
• Authors: Siyao Li; Ruijiao Dong; Valentina-Elena M...; Jihoon Kim; Neel D. Rangnekar; J. R. Johnson; Bennett D. Marshall; Stefan Chisca; Jia Xu; Scott Hoy; Benjamin A. McCool; Suzana P. Nunes; Zhiwei Jiang; Andrew G. Livingston
• Keywords: Permeance; Oligomer; Interfacial polymerization

Hydrocarbon separation relies on energy-intensive distillation. Membrane technology can offer an energy-efficient alternative but requires selective differentiation of crude oil molecules with rapid liquid transport. We synthesized multiblock oligomer amines, which comprised a central amine segment two hydrophobic blocks, and used them to fabricate polyamide nanofilms by interfacial polymerization from self-assembled vesicles. These provide transport liquids more than 100 times faster that conventional hydrophilic counterparts. In the fractionation light oil, manipulation film thickness down ~10 nanometers achieves permeance one order magnitude higher current state-of-the-art membranes while retaining comparable size- class-based separation. This high markedly reduce plant footprint, expands potential for using made ultrathin in fractionation.