(373l) Separation of Olefin-Paraffin Mixtures with OptipermTM customized Amorphous Fluoropolymer Membranes

Compact Membrane Systems has developed the novel Optiperm™ membrane platform for decarbonizing today’s industry across three applications: olefin paraffin separation, biogas, and carbon capture. The separation of light olefins from paraffins is one of the most energy intensive in the world. The state of the art separation method is distillation, a technology that has remained unchanged over decades. Membranes hold the promise of a more modular, energy efficient and capital efficient method for separation. However, they have historically been hampered by low performance and stability.

CMS’ Optiperm™ membrane it the first membrane developed to overcome the hurdles of practicing facilitated transport in the field. By utilizing a silver embedded fluoropolymer material to selectively transport olefins, the membrane is chemically stable enough to stand up to process poisons. After demonstrating over 3 years of longevity in laboratory operation, Optiperm™ membranes were trialed at the Delaware City Refining Company in over 300 days of field operations validating the robustness and capability of the technology in an operating plant environment and CMS began the process of scalingthe membranes to industrial size.

To continue the commercialization of Optiperm™ Membranes, CMS’ has partnered with Braskem to jointly develop and fabricate a multistage pilot unit to test commercial scale spiral wound membranes. This pilot started up at the Braskem Marcus Hook facility in March 2022 to test commercial scale membrane modules with active areas of >100 ft2 under field operating conditions using actual process streams. Furthermore the pilot units design incorporates all of the process equipment and operations of a commercial scale unit including an advanced process control system that enables the system to simultaneously produced two high quality product streams. Scale up and pilot design considerations will be discussed. We will share the latest learnings from our pilot field testing with Braskem as well as provide updates on the scale up of our flat sheet spiral wound membrane cartridges.