Crude oil fractionation by means of mesoporous polyacrylonitrile membranes

Atmospheric and vacuum distillation consume more than 1,100 TWh year^-1 and emit more than 160 million metric tonnes of CO₂ equivalent annually^1,2, making membrane-based pre-fractionation a compelling retrofit strategy for lowering the energy and carbon intensity of petroleum refining^3-10. Here we demonstrate that porous polyacrylonitrile (PAN) membranes, typically used as support layers, achieve effective molecular refining of crude oil at steady state. Under tangential flow, PAN membranes exhibited high crude oil permeances of up to 0.591 ± 0.040 l m^-2 h^-1 bar^-1, a more than 23-fold increase over the previous benchmark (<0.1 l m^-2 h^-1 bar^-1)^1,11, selectively yielding enriched lighter hydrocarbon fractions such as naphtha and kerosene. This unexpected selectivity arises from the dynamic deposition of heavy hydrocarbons within the initially approximately 15-nm surface mesopores, which narrows the pore diameter to sub-2-nm dimensions. Depth-resolved chemical identification reveals selective accumulation of n-alkanes, suggesting a self-limiting pore constriction mechanism that stabilizes selective transport pathways. Once the n-alkane deposition is stabilized, selective enrichment of raw crude oils occurs with sustained stability over 4 weeks. Process simulations show that PAN-membrane-based pre-fractionation could reduce energy by 31.6%, cooling water by 20.7% and CO₂ emissions by 37.6% compared with traditional atmospheric distillation.