Issue 42, 2024

Metal–organic frameworks with two different-sized aromatic ring-confined nanotraps for benchmark natural gas upgrade

Abstract

Recovery of light alkanes from natural gas is of great significance in petrochemical production. Herein, a promising strategy utilizing two types of size-complementary aromatic ring-confined nanotraps (called bi-nanotraps here) is proposed to efficiently trap ethane (C2H6) and propane (C3H8) selectively at their respective sites. Two isostructural metal–organic frameworks (MOFs, SNNU-185/186), each containing bi-nanotraps decorated with six aromatic rings, are selected to demonstrate the feasibility of this method. The smaller nanotrap acts as adsorption sites tailored for C2H6 while the larger one is optimized in size for C3H8. The separation is further facilitated by the large channels, which serve as mass transfer pathways. These advanced features give rise to multiple C–H⋯π interactions and size/shape-selective interaction sites, enabling SNNU-185/186 to achieve high C2H6 adsorption enthalpy (43.5/48.8 kJ mol−1) and a very large thermodynamic interaction difference between C2H6 and CH4. Benefiting from the bi-nanotrap effect, SNNU-185/186 exhibits benchmark experimental natural gas upgrade performance with top-level CH4 productivity (6.85/6.10 mmol g−1), ultra-high purity and first-class capture capacity for C2H6 (1.23/0.90 mmol g−1) and C3H8 (2.33/2.15 mmol g−1).

Graphical abstract: Metal–organic frameworks with two different-sized aromatic ring-confined nanotraps for benchmark natural gas upgrade

Supplementary files

Article information

Article type
Edge Article
Submitted
03 Jul 2024
Accepted
26 Sep 2024
First published
04 Oct 2024
This article is Open Access

All publication charges for this article have been paid for by the Royal Society of Chemistry
Creative Commons BY-NC license

Chem. Sci., 2024,15, 17547-17555

Metal–organic frameworks with two different-sized aromatic ring-confined nanotraps for benchmark natural gas upgrade

S. Li, Y. Xue, J. Wang, H. Li, J. Lei, H. Lv, X. Bu, P. Zhang, Y. Wang, W. Yuan and Q. Zhai, Chem. Sci., 2024, 15, 17547 DOI: 10.1039/D4SC04387A

This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 3.0 Unported Licence. You can use material from this article in other publications, without requesting further permission from the RSC, provided that the correct acknowledgement is given and it is not used for commercial purposes.

To request permission to reproduce material from this article in a commercial publication, please go to the Copyright Clearance Center request page.

If you are an author contributing to an RSC publication, you do not need to request permission provided correct acknowledgement is given.

If you are the author of this article, you do not need to request permission to reproduce figures and diagrams provided correct acknowledgement is given. If you want to reproduce the whole article in a third-party commercial publication (excluding your thesis/dissertation for which permission is not required) please go to the Copyright Clearance Center request page.

Read more about how to correctly acknowledge RSC content.

Social activity

Spotlight

Advertisements