Design of organic structure directing agents to guide the synthesis of zeolites for the separation of ethylene–ethane mixtures

Industrial production of ethylene entails a costly separation from the ethane by-product, and this separation is the dominant consumer of energy in the process. Zeolites have been proposed as a next generation material for this separation process, and a molecular screen of all known zeolites has revealed several promising candidate materials. None of the identified materials has yet been synthesized in the all-silica form evaluated in the screen. We here design organic structure directing agents (OSDAs) for four of the zeolites with the best predicted separation performance, two that are ethylene selective and two that are ethane selective. The designed OSDAs may enable the synthesis of these zeolites for more energy efficient separation of ethylene and ethane.