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Plasticization is a well-understood drawback of polymer membranes in many applications; however, recent studies have demonstrated surprising advantages of this phenomenon for demanding natural gas sweetening for some glassy polymer dense film membranes. Moving beyond dense film membranes, the current study focuses on cellulose triacetate (CTA) hollow fiber membranes to use the benefits of controlled plasticization for realistic raw natural gas sweetening. Natural gas sweetening can be complicated by co-existence of condensable hydrocarbons, e.g. C₂H₆, C₃H₈ and toluene with the main H₂S/CO₂/CH₄ ternary mixture; moreover, the operating temperature and pressure adds another dimension to this important separation. In this study, we consider an aggressive gas composition of high H₂S (20 mol.%), low CO₂ (5 mol.%), and significant amounts of C₂H₆ (3 mol.%) and C₃H₈ (3 mol.%) as well as …