Interesting Engineering

MIT researchers have developed a new membrane that can separate different kinds of fuel by molecular size, which could replace the current energy-intensive crude oil distillation process. “Roughly 1 percent of global energy use goes into separating crude oil into gasoline, diesel, and heating oil,” writes Aamir Khollam for Interesting Engineering. This new membrane “excelled in lab tests…[and] effectively separated real industrial oil samples containing naphtha, kerosene, and diesel.”