Technique Separates Complex Molecular Mixtures
Chemists at the Univ. of Liverpool have created a new technique that could be used in industry to separate complex organic chemical mixtures. Chemical feedstocks containing benzene are used extensively in industry to create modern materials and polymers.
Their use relies heavily on distillation techniques which separate complex mixtures into more simple molecules used as building blocks to develop drugs, plastics and new materials. These distillation techniques can be expensive and involve large amounts of energy for hard-to-separate mixtures. A team of researchers at the university’s Department of Chemistry, led by Prof. Andrew Cooper, have created organic molecular crystals that are able to separate important organic aromatic molecules by their molecular shape.
Read more: http://www.laboratoryequipment.com/news/2013/02/technique-separates-complex-molecular-mixtures
