Cool. Like desalination on steroids.
I long for the day that the influence of DJT policies eliminate such thinking and I can read an article absent such psychotic language.
Hold thy breath? Nay.
Besides, absent action by the worthless Congress, it will snap back like a coiled spring when he's gone.
Coffee filter applied to oil?
Interesting. I’d think it would make oil refineries a lot safer, too.
Interesting. If they can truly make this commercially viable in is a game-changet in the refining business.
How much heat and pressure are required to push the molecules through a membrane? What about impurities clogging the membrane? Because something works on a small scale does not make it feasible for commercial production.
The paper makes no mention of what types of crude oil this membrane cold be applied to. I’m not a petroleum engineer, but I’d think you’d have a hard time pushing medium, heavy, and extra-heavy crude oils through a membrane. It could be applicable to light crude oils, but these are only 15-20% of global reserves.
Early in my career, I burned “Bunker C” fuel which is the “bottoms” from the distillation process. After distillation, refineries use vacuum distillation to reduce the boiling point of “Residual Oil” and what comes out the bottom of that process is Bunker C. It’s nasty stuff, lots of sulfur and metals, and must be heated 24x7. Stop heating it and it freezes into a block of solid tar.
Heavy Oil (API < 22.3°): 25–30% (~430–520 billion barrels)
Driven by Venezuela (303 billion barrels, mostly heavy/extra-heavy) and Canada (171 billion barrels, oil sands). Smaller contributions from Mexico, Colombia, and Middle Eastern heavy fields (e.g., Iraq, Kuwait).
Medium Oil (API 22.3°–31.1°): 50–60% (~865–1,040 billion barrels)
Dominant in Saudi Arabia, Iran, Iraq, Russia, UAE, and Kuwait, where conventional fields produce medium crudes. This is the largest category due to the prevalence of these fields.
Light Oil (API > 31.1°): 15–20% (~260–345 billion barrels)
Significant in U.S. shale (tight oil), Saudi Arabia (Arabian Light/Extra Light), Libya, and Nigeria. Light oil’s share is growing with shale but remains smaller than medium.
Usefulness would depend on how long the separation process takes. E.g., by how much does this change the amount of time it takes to produce a barrel?
Three decades ago an oil refinery was proposed to be built near Mobile, Arizona. Unfortunately, the Greenies put the kibosh on it under the pretext of the danger of pollution from the refinery.
Would this technology allay those fears?
“potentially allowing it to be scaled up for widespread use”
Journalists are crap. Completely useless after the 24 hr. news cycle was adopted. They have to make S up and speculate to produce
The question I would ask is cost of conversion of heavy crude fractation.
Also, how long would the filters last before plant would have to be taken down to clean/replace filters.
In Texas we crack a lot of heavies from West Texas and other countries.
Very cool. I wondering how much the filtration process cost for filters, pump pressure, unusable waste etc. This process isn’t cost free.
I’d bet the a good chunk of the energy used in current distillation is generated using other wise low grade or nearly useless by products.
The savings is probably only a small fraction compared the headline. But the 100 mpg carburetor is out there somewhere too.
Wonder if this tech could be applied to distilling spirits. Ethanol and methanol are different sizes, and would be much safer than boiling the mash, now that home distilling has been approved I read somewhere.
A demonstration with Naptha, Kerosene and Diesel is light years away from actual crude oil. A lot of the stuff is just downright nasty including all manner of metals and other junk. I can’t imagine pushing some of the stuff through a screen door let alone a membrane sieve. Tankers for Middle East Oil have to be cleaned out or they gain weight from all the salt and other solids that fall out of the oil while being transported as just one example of all the junk that is in crude oil.
Good luck. The only half credible and hopeful part of this is that Exxon sponsored the research.
Crude oil is a whole lot different than salt water filtration to fresh water.
membranes won’t help with the most important function in petroleum refineries, namely catalytic cracking of large-molecule petroleum components into lighter, more useful substances such as benzene and many others ...
Research like this will probably be against the law after Trump leaves office.
Very interesting article. Thanks for posting.
I knew that modern desalination uses a filter system.
However, I had no idea how it worked, and the atomic level filter solution is fascinating.
It would be easier to mix the oil with vinegar as the oil separates....