Sustainable Separations for Utilities

Whether producing hydrogen, splitting hydrocarbons, recovering solvents, or manufacturing chemicals, polymers, and paper products, energy-guzzling separation processes are at the heart of these applications. Legacy thermal technologies like distillation, evaporation, and drying can account for 80% of in- plant energy use in the industry today.

Emerging membrane technologies are creating new solutions for sustainable separations that can reduce energy demand, shift from combustion to electric processes, recover more products, and enable efficient capital investment in existing facilities. The opportunity is massive: Across processing industries, more than 2,200 Tbtu are addressable using membranes, with possible savings of 900 Tbtu in the U.S. alone.

This executive summary shares three things utility companies need to know about sustainable separations.