DESC0025174

C58-12b-282827 Separating gases is at the heart of modern industry and our products, processes and medical treatments that define our modern way of life. Gas separation is currently very costly and very energy intensive. Although it happens behind the scenes, it is one of the major consumers of energy in the US. Gas separation and production also leads to the creation of greenhouse gases and other airborne pollutants. Research increasingly shows this airborne pollution has a very negative impact on the nation's health and longevity, in addition to environmental effects. Instead of the 19th and 20th century technologies now in use, a way to solve the whole problem of high costs, the high energy, the greenhouse gases, the pollutants and more would be to build with atomic precision. Do it at the atomic scale by building a membrane that is one atomic layer thick and is precision crafted atom-by-atom to only select what you want to go through. Covalent has already done this for water, enabling creating high purity/low energy/low-cost water no matter how polluted the source. Now the technology is being adapted for gas separation. This technology can be applied to any gas: carbon dioxide, oxygen, helium, ethane, propane, methane, nitrogen. The list goes on making it less expensive to separate that gas, doing it at high purity and low energy. The hydrogen economy, the petroleum industry, chemical manufacturing, pulp & paper, food production, medical applications are just some of the places for commercial applications.