Continuous and rapid manufacturing of ultrathin zeolite membranes with exceptional gas separation performance

The industrial application of microporous crystalline membranes for gas separation has been persistently hindered by the inefficiency of conventional batch synthesis. To address this limitation, we reported a continuous and ultrafast synthesis (CUS) strategy that enables the efficient production of ultrathin b-oriented MFI and SSZ-13 zeolite membranes in just 10–15 min. The resulting MFI and SSZ-13 membranes exhibited superior separation performance in n-butane/i-butane and CO₂/N₂ mixtures, respectively, far exceeding those of previously reported membranes. Remarkably, the CUS process achieved a two-order-of-magnitude reduction in synthesis time, a 95% decrease in energy consumption and a 98% reduction in gel consumption compared to the batch process. Process simulation using Aspen Plus confirmed that energy consumption was reduced by over 87.6% with membrane separation compared to conventional distillation for butane isomer separation. This work establishes an efficient, scalable, and economically viable pathway for industrial-scale fabrication of zeolite membranes for gas separation.