Issue 24, 2022

Tailoring a robust Al-MOF for trapping C2H6 and C2H2 towards efficient C2H4 purification from quaternary mixtures

Abstract

Light hydrocarbon separation is considered one of the most industrially challenging and desired chemical separation processes and is highly essential in polymer and chemical industries. Among them, separating ethylene (C2H4) from C2 hydrocarbon mixtures such as ethane (C2H6), acetylene (C2H2), and other natural gas elements (CO2, CH4) is of paramount importance and poses significant difficulty. We demonstrate such separations using an Al-MOF synthesised earlier as a non-porous material, but herein endowed with hierarchical porosity created under microwave conditions in an equimolar water/ethanol solution. The material possessing a large surface area (793 m2 g−1) exhibits an excellent uptake capacity for major industrial hydrocarbons in the order of C2H2 > C2H6 > CO2 > C2H4 > CH4 under ambient conditions. It shows an outstanding dynamic breakthrough separation of ethylene (C2H4) not only for a binary mixture (C2H6/C2H4) but also for a quaternary combination (C2H4/C2H6/C2H2/CO2 and C2H4/C2H6/C2H2/CH4) of varying concentrations. The detailed separation/purification mechanism was unveiled by gas adsorption isotherms, mixed-gas adsorption calculations, selectivity estimations, advanced computer simulations such as density functional theory (DFT), grand canonical Monte Carlo (GCMC) and ab initio molecular dynamics (AIMD), and stepwise multicomponent dynamic breakthrough experiments.

Graphical abstract: Tailoring a robust Al-MOF for trapping C2H6 and C2H2 towards efficient C2H4 purification from quaternary mixtures

Supplementary files

Article information

Article type
Edge Article
Submitted
25 Feb 2022
Accepted
15 Mai 2022
First published
20 Mai 2022
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., 2022,13, 7172-7180

Tailoring a robust Al-MOF for trapping C2H6 and C2H2 towards efficient C2H4 purification from quaternary mixtures

S. Laha, N. Dwarkanath, A. Sharma, D. Rambabu, S. Balasubramanian and T. K. Maji, Chem. Sci., 2022, 13, 7172 DOI: 10.1039/D2SC01180H

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