Under the background of dual-carbon strategy, it is an important way to develop clean energy and realize the separation and capture of carbon dioxide (CO2) in industrial processes.

"The carbon dioxide contained in natural gas will reduce the calorific value of fuel and corrode pipelines, so natural gas needs decarbonization before entering the pipeline network." Professor Gu said that the carbon emissions of natural gas are much lower than those of coal and oil, and it is a relatively clean fossil energy. Natural gas will play an important role in the future energy structure adjustment, and decarbonization is the key production link.

"Compared with polymer membrane molecular sieve, zeolite molecular sieve can develop its advantages and avoid its disadvantages." Professor Wang, the first author of this paper, said that the zeolite molecular sieve has uniform pore size, high separation performance and good stability.

Gu vividly introduced, for example, when screening beans, the big ones stay on them and the small ones are screened out. Zeolite molecular sieve membrane also made a "special" sieve to screen gas molecules of different sizes. The pore size of zeolite molecular sieve is 0.36 nm, the diameter of carbon dioxide molecule is 0.33 nm, and the methane molecule is 0.38 nm, so that carbon dioxide is screened out.

"The screened 1 172 carbon dioxide molecules are only mixed with 1 methane molecules, and the efficiency is much higher than the polymer membrane' sieve'." Wang introduced that all-silicon DD3R molecular sieve membrane is an ideal natural gas decarbonization membrane material, but it is easy to deform. In view of this, the research group put forward a strategy, that is, adjusting the flexibility of the framework of DD3R molecular sieve by rapid heating and instantaneous pyrolysis (700), and then continuously calcining at a moderate temperature (550) to remove the template, thus making an efficient "molecular sieve".

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