Natural gas (mostly methane) contains up to 10% of large hydrocarbons such as ethane, propane, and butane. Once removed from the methane, these valuable chemicals must then be separated. Currently, this is done by cryogenic distillation in a very energy- and capital-intensive process.

KAUST's Zhiping Lai, Assistant Professor of Chemical and Biological Engineering and Yichang Pan, a postdoctoral scientist in his group, have recently developed a porous membrane, the first that can efficiently separate C2 and C3 mixtures based on a molecular sieving effect. The membrane is highly selective and can also be used to separate many other industrially important mixtures such as propylene/propane. Their work was published recently in the prestigious Royal Society of Chemistry journal, Chemical Communications.