Membrane Applications for Commodity Scale Chemicals

The Dow Chemical Company (TDCC) is one of the largest producers and consumers of small molecules and monomers in the world. As such, TDCC is a major consumer of natural resources and produces significant amounts of waste, such as CO2 and waste heat. TDCC has implemented well publicized efforts for improving use of such resources which are contained in the TDCC Sustainability Goals. The broad area of separations has been identified as one of the major technologies for potential efficiency improvements for utilization of energy and of feedstocks. Membranes have been and continue to be one of the many options that TDCC considers when investigating improvements for separations. However, in many cases there has been little research conducted in industrially relevant membrane modules. In order to foster discussion for new processes, examples of industrially relevant, but somewhat under-represented, separations will be discussed as potential topics for membrane research. The discussions will center on:

Selectivity versus throughput: For success at meaningful scales, throughput and the size of the membrane unit is often at least as, if not more, important than selectivity.

Contaminants: Many potential industrially relevant membrane applications require that the membrane be tolerant to a broad range of species, not simply binary or ternary mixtures.