The technique investigated in two new papers, published in theJournal of the American Chemical AssociationandOrganometallics, would avoid liquefaction and distillation by designing a material that only binds ethylene molecules, thus separating them from ethane.

乙烯是一种烯烃unsatu——一个分子rated bond (like unsaturated fats). Current methods of separating ethylene from ethane involve cooling the mixture to very low temperatures, liquefying it, and feeding it into a large distillation column, which is an energy-intensive and costly process. Developed by a team led by Professors Karl Johnson, PhD, and Götz Veser, PhD, from Chemical and Petroleum Engineering, and Professor Nathaniel Rosi, PhD, from the Department of Chemistry, this new process would potentially save a great deal of energy, reducing carbon emissions and costs at the same time.

这个新的分离方法分离的核心d copper atoms that olefins like ethylene can bond to strongly. Since copper atoms naturally want to clump together, which destroys their ability to bond with olefins, the Pittsburgh researchers used metal-organic frameworks (MOFs) to effectively isolate single atoms of copper in the right location to produce high-grade ethylene at least 99.999 percent pure.

"The uniqueness of this material is that the isolated copper atoms are in the right oxidation state and the right geometry within the metal organic framework to provide very high selectivity -- higher than other adsorption methods -- and it can easily be scaled up," says Johnson, the W.K. Whiteford Professor in the Department of Chemical and Petroleum Engineering and Associate Director of the Center for Research Computing. "MOFs are a practical alternative to an inefficient and costly process."