Most industrial chemists spend their days separating the components of large quantities of chemical mixtures into pure or purer forms. The processes involved, such as distillation, account for 10–15% ...

The U.S. chemical industry includes producers of industrial gases, large-volume commodity chemicals and polymers, chemical products for agricultural and medicinal uses, and performance-targeted ...

A solid sorbent that selectively binds hydrocarbons may help the petrochemical industry reduce costs and energy consumption by increasing the efficiency of—or eliminating—energy-intensive separation ...

Industry separates crude oil, natural gas and chemical mixtures into pure products by means of fractionating distillation columns. This process is energy-intensive, but a new type of column structure ...

Listen to the full series on BBC Sounds. Fractional distillation works because the different liquids have different boiling points. When the mixture is heated: vapours rise through a column which is ...

Researchers are suggesting seven energy-intensive separation processes they believe should be the top targets for research into low-energy purification technologies. Beyond cutting energy use, ...

CORRECTION: This story was updated on Dec. 16, 2015, to correct the description of distillation and to clarify the separation difficulty posed by azeotropes. A new method for heating liquid mixtures ...