Separating olefins from paraffin in petroleum wastewater is a heavy expense for the petrochemical industry. Companies are looking for cheaper techniques to recycle waste streams. Neutron scattering on the BASIS instrument at Oak Ridge National Laboratory's Spallation Neutron Source shows that olefins unsaturated hydrocarbons can be separated from paraffin efficiently and cheaply using novel silver complex-based ionic liquids synthesized at ORNL by Sheng Dai. In this hybrid olefin-paraffin separation method, the metal ions of silver or copper bond to the ionic liquid and then act as carriers for the olefins, transferring these unwanted materials through a membrane where they can be collected. In this invention, quasielastic neutron scattering provided fundamental insight into the mechanisms of olefin transport that could not be obtained through other characterization techniques. Olefins are used in the making of a variety of products, including packaging, automobile parts, synthetic rubber and nylon fibers.
Menu