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Scientists Discover Way to Send Information into Black Holes Without Using Energy

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Scientists Create a Revolutionary Membrane That Separates Crude Oil Without Heat

For more than a century, the global oil industry has relied on one energy-intensive process to separate crude oil into useful products: distillation. From gasoline and jet fuel to the raw materials used for plastics, packaging, textiles and countless everyday products, crude oil refining plays a major role in modern society.

However, producing these valuable materials comes with a huge energy cost. Traditional refineries heat crude oil to extremely high temperatures, consuming enormous amounts of energy and releasing significant greenhouse gas emissions. Now, a team of researchers has developed a surprising new technology that could change the way crude oil is processed forever — a simple membrane that can separate crude oil at room temperature without the need for heating.

The breakthrough was achieved by a research team led by Professor Dong-Yeun Koh of the Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology (KAIST), in collaboration with Professor Ryan Lively’s group at Georgia Tech. Their findings, published in the journal Nature, reveal a new approach where crude oil itself helps create the separation system.

The Energy Problem Behind Oil Refining

Crude oil is not a single substance. It is a complex mixture containing hundreds of different hydrocarbons with different sizes and properties. Refineries must separate these components to produce lighter products such as gasoline, naphtha and kerosene, while removing heavier fractions.

Currently, this is mainly done through distillation. In this process, crude oil is heated above 350°C (662°F), causing different components to vaporize at different temperatures. The vapors are then cooled and collected separately.

Although effective, this process requires massive amounts of energy. Globally, crude oil distillation consumes around 1,100 terawatt-hours of energy every year — an amount comparable to the continuous output of approximately 130 large nuclear power plants.

Because of this enormous energy demand, refining remains one of the biggest contributors to industrial energy consumption and carbon emissions. As industries face increasing pressure to reduce emissions and operating costs, scientists have been searching for more efficient alternatives.

A Membrane That Builds Itself

Membrane technology has long been considered a promising alternative to traditional distillation. Instead of heating liquids, membranes can separate molecules based on their size and chemical properties.

However, previous membrane systems faced major challenges. Scientists believed that achieving precise separation required a very thin, specially designed selective layer on the membrane surface. While these coatings improved performance, they also increased manufacturing costs and created problems when producing large industrial-scale membranes.

The KAIST and Georgia Tech researchers took a completely different approach.

Instead of adding an expensive special coating, they used a simple and affordable porous polyacrylonitrile (PAN) membrane. PAN is a stable polymer commonly used in industrial membrane applications.

When crude oil passed through this basic membrane, something unexpected happened. Heavy hydrocarbons from the crude oil naturally collected inside the tiny pores of the membrane. Over time, these deposits narrowed the pores and created extremely small separation pathways — less than 2 nanometers wide.

In other words, the crude oil itself transformed the membrane into a highly selective filter.

A problem usually considered harmful in membrane technology — fouling — became the key mechanism behind the invention. Instead of reducing performance, the buildup of heavy molecules improved the membrane’s ability to separate different components.

Faster Separation With Lower Energy Use

The newly developed PAN membrane showed remarkable performance. It allowed lighter components such as naphtha, gasoline and kerosene to pass through quickly while blocking heavier molecules.

The membrane achieved crude oil processing speeds around 23 times higher than previously reported advanced crude oil separation membranes. It also maintained stable performance for 28 consecutive days during testing.

Professor Ryan Lively from Georgia Tech explained that low productivity has always been one of the biggest obstacles preventing membrane technology from replacing traditional crude oil separation methods. This new membrane dramatically improves productivity, making industrial adoption a realistic possibility.

A Solution That Could Work With Existing Refineries

One of the biggest advantages of this technology is that it does not require completely rebuilding existing refinery systems.

Researchers designed the membrane as a modular filtration unit that could be added before traditional distillation. This means refineries could reduce energy use while continuing to use their existing infrastructure.

According to process simulations, using this membrane as a pretreatment step could lead to:

  • 31.6% reduction in energy consumption

  • 37.6% reduction in carbon dioxide emissions

  • 20.7% reduction in cooling water usage

  • 36% reduction in operating costs

If introduced across South Korea’s refining and petrochemical industries, researchers estimate that the technology could reduce greenhouse gas emissions by about 10 million tons every year — similar to removing around 4 million gasoline-powered vehicles from the road.

Beyond Oil: A Platform for Future Industries

The potential of this technology extends far beyond crude oil.

Researchers believe the same membrane concept could be used for many other important chemical separation processes, including cleaning pyrolysis oil produced from waste plastics, recovering solvents used in battery production, pharmaceutical purification and improving biofuel processing.

The discovery introduces a new scientific idea: instead of designing every membrane from scratch, scientists can create systems where complex mixtures naturally help build their own separation structures.

Professor Dong-Yeun Koh said that working with real crude oil supplied by HD Hyundai Oilbank helped validate the technology under realistic industrial conditions. The research team believes this approach could lead to a new generation of sustainable separation technologies.

Professor Jae W. Lee of KAIST emphasized that improving large-scale manufacturing and long-term reliability will be important steps toward bringing the technology into widespread industrial use.

The researchers are now working on controlling the natural pore-constriction process more precisely and expanding the membrane platform for applications in recycling, renewable fuels and sustainable chemical production.

A New Era for Industrial Separation

This breakthrough represents a major shift in how scientists think about membrane technology. Instead of fighting against natural changes inside membranes, researchers have learned how to use those changes as an advantage.

A simple, inexpensive membrane that uses crude oil itself to create microscopic separation channels could help industries reduce energy consumption, lower emissions and move toward a more sustainable future.

If successfully scaled worldwide, this innovation could transform one of the most energy-demanding industrial processes on Earth — making crude oil refining cleaner, cheaper and far more efficient.

Reference: Choi, J., Seo, H., Lee, M. et al. Crude oil fractionation by means of mesoporous polyacrylonitrile membranes. Nature 654, 955–962 (2026). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-026-10677-3

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