Replacing Crude Oil Fractional Distillation With Microporous Polyimine Membranes

June 21, 2025 by Maya Posch 11 Comments

Currently the typical way that crude oil is processed involves a fractional distillation column, in which heated crude oil is separated into the various hydrocarbon compounds using distinct boiling points. This requires the addition of significant thermal energy and is thus fairly energy intensive. A possible alternative has been proposed by [Tae Hoon Lee] et al. with a research article in Science. They adapted membranes used with reverse-osmosis filtration to instead filter crude oil into its constituents, which could enable skipping the heating step and thus save a lot of energy.

The main change that had to be made was to replace the typical polyamide films with polyimine ones, as the former have the tendency to swell up – and thus becomes less effective – when exposed to organic solvents, which includes hydrocarbons. During testing, including with a mixture of naphtha, kerosene and diesel, the polyimine membrane was able to separate these by their molecular size.

It should be noted of course that this is still just small scale lab-testing and the real proof will be in whether it can scale up to the flow rates and endurance required from a replacement for a distillation column. Since this research is funded in part by the fossil fuel industry, one can at least expect that some trial installations will be set up before long, with hopefully positive results.

Big Chemistry: Seawater Desalination

June 16, 2025 by Dan Maloney 39 Comments

For a world covered in oceans, getting a drink of water on Planet Earth can be surprisingly tricky. Fresh water is hard to come by even on our water world, so much so that most sources are better measured in parts per million than percentages; add together every freshwater lake, river, and stream in the world, and you’d be looking at a mere 0.0066% of all the water on Earth.

Of course, what that really says is that our endowment of saltwater is truly staggering. We have over 1.3 billion cubic kilometers of the stuff, most of it easily accessible to the billion or so people who live within 10 kilometers of a coastline. Untreated, though, saltwater isn’t of much direct use to humans, since we, our domestic animals, and pretty much all our crops thirst only for water a hundred times less saline than seawater.

While nature solved the problem of desalination a long time ago, the natural water cycle turns seawater into freshwater at too slow a pace or in the wrong locations for our needs. While there are simple methods for getting the salt out of seawater, such as distillation, processing seawater on a scale that can provide even a medium-sized city with a steady source of potable water is definitely a job for Big Chemistry.

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Automated Syrup System Is Sweet Sweet Madness

March 3, 2018 by Tom Nardi 33 Comments

Here at Hackaday we are big fans of the TV show, “How It’s Made”. It’s not much of a stretch to assume that, as somebody who is currently reading this site, you’ve probably seen it yourself. While it’s always interesting to see the behind the scenes process to create everyday products, one of the most fascinating aspects of the show is seeing how hard it is to make things. Seriously, it’s enough to make you wonder how companies are turning a profit on some of these products when you see just how much technology and manual work is required to produce them.

That’s precisely the feeling we got when browsing through this absolutely incredible overview of how [HDC3] makes his maple syrup. If that’s not a sentence you ever thought you’d see on Hackaday, you aren’t alone. But this isn’t a rusty old pail hanging off of a tap, this is a high-tech automated system that’s capable of draining 100’s of gallons of sap from whole groves of trees. We’ll never look at a bottle of syrup in the store the same away again.

It all starts with hundreds of tiny taps that are drilled into the trees and connected to a network of flexible hoses. The plumbing arrangement is so complex that, in certain, areas high tension support wires are necessary to hold up the weight of the hoses and their sweet contents. The main hose leads to an Arduino-powered collection station which maintains a 100 kPa (29 inHg) vacuum throughout the entire system.

The sap is temporarily held in a 250 gallon container, but at this point it’s still just that: sap. It needs to be refined into something suitable for putting on your pancakes. The first step of that process utilizes a reverse osmosis filtration system to pull the water out of the sap and increase its sugar concentration. [HDC3] says the filtration system is built from eBay scores and parts from the home improvement store, and it certainly looks the part of something that would be under a kitchen sink. This system is able to increase the sugar concentration of the sap from around 2% as it comes out of the trees to 8%. But it’s still a far way off from being ready to use.

Interestingly enough, the last steps of the process are about as old-school as they come. The semi-concentrated sap is placed in a long low metal pan, and heated over a wood fire to drive off more of the water. This process continues until the sap is roughly 60% sugar, at which point it is filtered and moved into the house to finish boiling on the stove.

All told, the syrup is boiled for eight hours to bring its sugar content up to 66%. Even with the improvements [HDC3] has made to the system, he reveals that all this hard work only results in slightly more than a half-gallon of final syrup. Talk about dedication.

It probably comes as no surprise that this is the first time Hackaday has ever run a story about producing maple syrup. However we’ve seen a number of automated beer brewing systems that seem to have been tackled with similar zeal. There’s probably a conclusion to be drawn there about the average hacker’s diet, but that’s a bit outside our wheelhouse.

[via /r/DIY]

Billboard Advertises Engineering School, Manufactures Potable Water

March 13, 2014 by Kristina Panos 24 Comments

It’s a remarkable thing when ad agencies manage to help people in the course of advertising. The University of Technology and Engineering Peru (UTEC) was looking for ways to increase enrollment. They went to the Peruvian offices of agency DraftFCB and came away with the idea to install a billboard that converts Lima’s water-saturated coastal desert air into potable water.

Perhaps the only downside is that it requires electricity, and not just for those cool neon water drops. There are five generators that capture the humidity and use reverse osmosis to purify the water. Each of these units has a tank that holds 20L. From there, the clean water is aggregated in a main tank and can be collected from a faucet at the base of the billboard. In just three months, the billboard produced over 9,000L (2500 gallons) of potable water for people who would otherwise draw polluted water from wells.

We love to see hacks that help. Use your powers for good, like re-purposing humid air and pollution. Make the jump to see a short video and an artist’s conception of the billboard’s innards.

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