The UniSieve technology promises to save up to 90% of the separation and purification energy that are needed to produce base chemicals. The chemical industry does change the composition of molecules to increase their functionality and value. This means that natural feedstocks such as oil, gas or bio-based materials must be broken down into a mixture of small molecules. These small molecules, also called chemical feedstocks (e.g. ethylene, propylene) are then purified and assembled to the desired product, such as pharmaceuticals or polymers. All the separation processes on this plant together account for over 10% of the global energy consumption as most of them are heat driven (distillation). In contrast to distillation, UniSieve’s molecular sieving technology can separate molecules based on their size, enabling significant energy savings. This significant energy savings are enabled by the molecular sieving properties of the UniSieve membranes that allow smaller molecules to quickly permeate, while larger ones are retained.
Customer benefits:
- Save up to 90% of the separation process energy and the associated CO2 emissions
- Recover or recycle valuable products (chemicals or energy carriers) from various processing steps.
- Reduce the operational costs
Until 2026, it is expected that 56 UniSieve separation units are installed, and that the technology will have reduced CO2 emissions by a million ton. Also, by decreasing separation energy, renewable chemicals and energy carriers will become more sustainable.
