Separation processes are omnipresent in the industry in many areas, including energy, environment and health, to separate chemical mixtures into pure components through operations such as distillation, molecular sieving, etc. These processes are account for a significant fraction of the world's energy consumption, and therefore the design of more energy efficient separation methods could help lower global energy use, carbon dioxide emissions and pollution. While distillation is the chemical engineering process most commonly associated with chemical separation and purification, other options exist such as crystallization, adsorption and membranes. Microporous materials, such as porous amorphous polymers or nanoporous crystalline materials, are among the materials frequently used for both adsorption and the design of membranes.