A thorough and up-dated literature survey has been conducted on processes for separating hydrogen and methane. This was done in conjunction with our work of developing a more energy-efficient and lower-cost process based on cyclic, fixed-bed processes using coal chars as the sorbents. Although the review has covered all hydrocarbon separation processes, the focuses were on physical adsorption phenomena and theories (for both single and mixed gases), surface and pore characteristics of coals and heat-treated coals, and the continuous or semi-continuous chromatographic separation methods. There has been a sharply increasing interest in the past 10 to 15 years in developing processes for hydrocarbon separation based on adsorption/desorption; this is particularly true since the energy costs became increasingly higher recently. The rigorous work on competitive adsorption and on the cyclic (including parametric pumping) processes has all been done in the past 13 years. On the other hand, it is disappointing to find the absence of knowledge on adsorption on coal chars and the lack of it on adsorption on raw coals as well.