Beyond Materials Rankings: When Adsorption or Membranes Win for CO2/CH4 Separation
5 affiliations
- 1Lucy Cavendish College
- 2University of Cambridge
- 3University of Auckland
- 4School of Chemical Engineering, Faculty of Engineering
- 5University of Tehran
Abstract
Choosing between adsorption and membranes for carbon dioxide removal from methane is often reduced to a contest between material metrics, even though an industrially meaningful answer emerges from the coupled material, flowsheet, pressure, composition, recovery, and economic context. Here we compare the technologies on a common process boundary, allowing each to select its process-optimal material, equipment size, and membrane architecture while meeting identical methane-product and recovery constraints. The resulting atlas spans 300 ARC–MOF adsorbents, 220 experimental polymers, and 864 matched biogas-and natural-gas-like scenarios. Among 676 mutually feasible cases, adsorption minimizes annualized cost in 73.4% and membranes in 26.6%; choosing the wrong technology incurs a median cost regret of 19.4%. Crucially, the boundary is not a single pressure threshold. Four pressurized-natural-gas slices exhibit clean adsorption–membrane–adsorption re-entry as the optimal material and membrane flowsheet switch with operating conditions. Material and architecture ablations isolate this mechanism. Cost-based choices disagree with energy, methane-loss, and footprint choices in 30.8–46.0% of paired comparisons, while cost and operational-climate choices disagree in 25.4%; joint uncertainty creates an explicit abstention region in 18.3% of boundary-focused cases. The framework converts high-throughput materials screening into conditional, auditable technology-selection rules and a compact agenda for cycle and mixed-gas validation under realistic process conditions and quantified uncertainty ranges.
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BibTeX
@misc{asgari2026beyond,
title = {{Beyond Materials Rankings: When Adsorption or Membranes Win for CO2/CH4 Separation}},
author = {Mehrdad Asgari and Mohammad Sadegh Salimian Rizi and Shayan Abaei and Zeynep Defne Sezen},
howpublished = {ChemRxiv},
year = {2026},
month = oct,
doi = {10.26434/chemrxiv.15010238/v1},
url = {https://chemrxiv.org/doi/full/10.26434/chemrxiv.15010238/v1},
note = {CC BY},
}
RIS
TY - UNPB
TI - Beyond Materials Rankings: When Adsorption or Membranes Win for CO2/CH4 Separation
AU - Mehrdad Asgari
AU - Mohammad Sadegh Salimian Rizi
AU - Shayan Abaei
AU - Zeynep Defne Sezen
PY - 2026
DA - 2026/10/11
PB - ChemRxiv
DO - 10.26434/chemrxiv.15010238/v1
UR - https://chemrxiv.org/doi/full/10.26434/chemrxiv.15010238/v1
AB - Choosing between adsorption and membranes for carbon dioxide removal from methane is often reduced to a contest between material metrics, even though an industrially meaningful answer emerges from the coupled material, flowsheet, pressure, composition, recovery, and economic context. Here we compare the technologies on a common process boundary, allowing each to select its process-optimal material, equipment size, and membrane architecture while meeting identical methane-product and recovery constraints. The resulting atlas spans 300 ARC–MOF adsorbents, 220 experimental polymers, and 864 matched biogas-and natural-gas-like scenarios. Among 676 mutually feasible cases, adsorption minimizes annualized cost in 73.4% and membranes in 26.6%; choosing the wrong technology incurs a median cost regret of 19.4%. Crucially, the boundary is not a single pressure threshold. Four pressurized-natural-gas slices exhibit clean adsorption–membrane–adsorption re-entry as the optimal material and membrane flowsheet switch with operating conditions. Material and architecture ablations isolate this mechanism. Cost-based choices disagree with energy, methane-loss, and footprint choices in 30.8–46.0% of paired comparisons, while cost and operational-climate choices disagree in 25.4%; joint uncertainty creates an explicit abstention region in 18.3% of boundary-focused cases. The framework converts high-throughput materials screening into conditional, auditable technology-selection rules and a compact agenda for cycle and mixed-gas validation under realistic process conditions and quantified uncertainty ranges.
ER -