Olefin Separation by Reversible Binding to Transition Mratl Complexes

Completed

Fossil Fuels: Oil Gas and Coal(Oil and Gas, Oil and gas conversion)
Energy Efficiency(Industry)

Basic and strategic applied research

PHYSICAL SCIENCES AND MATHEMATICS (Chemistry)

Not Cross-cutting

Professor D Wass
Chemistry
Cardiff University

Standard

EPSRC

16 October 2005

15 October 2008

36 months

£212,939

Chemical synthesis

Wales

Physical Sciences

Professor D Wass, Chemistry, Cardiff University

Ethylene is a simple but reactive chemical compound that is one of the most important building blocks in the petrochemical industry, used to make endproducts ranging from plastics to ethanol. It is produced in a process known as steam cracking from crude oil components in very large scale, a commercial-scale plant producing as much as 1 million tonnes each year. This process yields ethylene together with a mixture of other products which must then be separated. This separation is currently achieved by distillation at temperatures below -20 C; achieving such low temperatures at commercial scale is very costly, uses a lot of energy and produces a lot of undesirable "greenhouse" gases, such a carbon dioxide. Ethylene is also produced in smaller scale as a by-product of some crude oil refining processes but, because of these difficulties in separation, this valuable building block is simply burnt as a fuel in this case.The project is concerned with developing better, cheaper and more environmentally friendly ways of separating the ethylene produced in these processes. Other separation methods that could meet these targets are known and one of the most promising is based on the fact that certain other chemicals called "metal complexes" chemically bind to ethylene but not other components in the produced mixture. Under the right conditions, this chemical binding can be reversed to release pure ethylene. Unfortunately, the very simple metal complexes investigated to date have drawbacks and react in unwanted ways with some of the impurities present in ethylene-containing mixtures. In other areas of chemistry, using more complicated metal complexes can have dramatic benefits in controlling chemical reactivity to suppress unwanted chemical reactions. This project will investigate these new metal complexes with the aim of achieving ethylene separation without these undesirable reactions. Success could lead to much greener chemical technology in this important area

23/03/12