The modern world runs on chemicals and fuels that require a huge amount of energy to produce: Industrial chemical separation accounts for 10 to 15 percent of the world's total energy consumption. That's because most separations today rely on heat to boil off unwanted materials and isolate compounds. The MIT spinout Osmoses is making industrial chemical separations more efficient by reducing the need for all that heat. The company, founded by former MIT postdoc Francesco Maria Benedetti; Katherine Mizrahi Rodriguez '17, PhD '22; Professor Zachary Smith; and Holden Lai, has developed a polymer technology capable of filtering gases with unprecedented selectivity. Gases ' consisting of some of the smallest molecules in the world ' have historically been the hardest to separate. Osmoses says its membranes enable industrial customers to increase production, use less energy, and operate in a smaller footprint than is possible using conventional heat-based separation processes. Osmoses has...
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