Lower Energy Cost
In many cases, achieving a high purity olefins stream with distillation requires high reflux ratios and high heating and cooling duties. This leads to high energy consumption, especially when the energy isn’t available via heat exchange from other process streams.
Permylene's facilitated transport mechanism is not based on relative volatility and therefore does not directly consume energy for heating and cooling. Some energy may be used to provide temperatures and pressures that are within a suitable range for the membrane system but the net energy consumption is normally much lower than for distillation.
Depending on the application, energy savings for Permylene membrane technology can be up to 90% when compared with distillation systems and can add up to millions of dollars per year in operating cost savings.