SBIR Phase I: Organic Solvent Nanofiltration Membrane Process

The broader impact/commercial potential of this Phase I Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) project will be enhancement of filtration capabilities across a range of industries. The project will develop a novel membrane filtration process to address the market need for energy-efficient separation and recovery of products on the molecular level from industrial process streams.

This is critical across a range of industries. As an example, every day 100M barrels of crude oil is processed in refineries around the world by thermal distillation, a process that uses ~1% of global energy use. In contrast to these high levels of energy use membrane based separations have potential to provide a 10-fold increase in energy efficiency.

This efficiency can also be leveraged across a range of industries including pharmaceuticals and production of active pharmaceutical ingredients (APIs). This project’s novel process will increase energy efficiency and reduce the environmental impact of the purification and recovery of products which will be enabling for chemical, petrochemical, and pharmaceutical industries alike.

This SBIR Phase I project will develop a novel membrane separation technology to address the energy-efficient separation of small molecules from industrial process streams for a range of industries. Separation/recovery of molecules in organic solvents in the Molecular Weight range of 150-2000 Da is currently carried out by distillation, solvent extraction, or crystallization.

Energy-intensive distillation dominates the separation of organic solvent mixtures (MW< 2,000 Da). Pressure-driven membrane processes such as organic solvent nanofiltration (OSNF), and organic solvent reverse osmosis (OSRO) are needed since they consume less energy vis-à-vis distillation. Industrial implementation of OSNF and OSRO processes is currently limited due to the limited solvent and thermal resistance of commercial polymeric membrane materials.

Advances in polymeric membrane’s chemical and solvent stability are needed to rival the industrial success of membrane-based water treatment. This project will develop functionalized nanoporous membranes from commercial plastic. The engineering polymer utilized in this project will provide exceptional solvent and chemical resistance and outstanding thermo-mechanical properties.

The polymer is functionalized by a reticulate synthetic methodology to form a composite membrane with separation properties in the OSNF range. The membrane preparation methodology will be advanced towards the separation of Active Pharmaceutical Intermediates (APIs). OSNF process for separation and purification of APIs from a range of industrial organic solvents will be developed.

This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.