INNOVATION COULD LEAD TO CUTS IN MANUFACTURING ENERGY USE

摘要

Scientists from ExxonMobil (http://corporate.exxon mobil.com) and the Georgia Institute of Technology (www.gatech.edu) have developed a potentially revolu-tionary new technology that could significantly reduce the amount of energy and emissions associated with manufacturing plastics. If brought to industrial scale, this breakthrough could reduce industry’s global annu-al carbon dioxide emissions by up to 45 million tons. It could also reduce global energy costs used to make plastics by up to $2 billion a year. Using a molecular level filter, the new process employs a form of reverse osmosis (RO) to separate para-xylene, a chemical building block for polyester and plastics, from complex hydrocarbon mixtures. The current commercial scale process used around the world relies on energy and heat to separate those molecules.