Recent Advances in Carbon-Based Adsorbents for Adsorptive Separation of Light Hydrocarbons

Light hydrocarbons (LHs) separation is an important process in petrochemical industry. The current separation technology predominantly relies on cryogenic distillation, which results in considerable energy consumption. Adsorptive separation using porous solids has received widespread attention due to its lower energy footprint and higher efficiency. Thus, tremendous efforts have been devoted to the design and synthesis of high-performance porous solids. Among them, porous carbons display exceptional stability, tunable pore structure, and surface chemistry and thus represent a class of novel adsorbents upon achieving the matched pore structures for LHs separations. In this review, the modulation strategies toward advanced carbon-based adsorbents for LHs separation are firstly reviewed. Then, the relationships between separation performances and key structural parameters of carbon adsorbents are discussed by exemplifying specific separation cases. The research findings on the control of the pore structures as well as the quantification of the adsorption sites are highlighted. Finally, the challenges of carbonaceous adsorbents facing for LHs separation are given, which would motivate us to rationally design more efficient absorbents and separation processes in future.