Aluminum Formate, Al(HCOO)3: An Earth-Abundant, Scalable, and Highly Selective Material for CO2 Capture

Published

November 2, 2022

Author(s)

Hayden Evans, Dinesh Mullangi, Zeyu Deng, Yuxiang Wang, Shing B. Peh, Fengxia Wei, John Wang, Craig Brown, Dan Zhao, Pieremanuele Canepa, Anthony K. Cheetham

Abstract

A combination of gas adsorption and gas breakthrough measurements show that the metal-organic framework, Al(HCOO)₃ (ALF), which can be made inexpensively from commodity chemicals, exhibits excellent CO₂ adsorption capacities and outstanding CO₂/N₂ selectivity that enable it to remove CO₂ from flue gases at realistic temperatures (323 Kelvin). Notably, ALF works very well in humid gas streams and is scalable, readily pelletized, stable to SO₂ and NO, and simple to regenerate. Density functional theory calculations and in-situ neutron diffraction studies reveal that the preferential adsorption of CO₂ is a size-selective separation that depends on the subtle difference between the kinetic diameters of CO₂ and N₂. The findings are supported by additional measurements, including Fourier-transform infrared spectroscopy, thermogravimetric analysis, and variable temperature powder and single-crystal X-ray diffraction.

Citation

Science Advances

Volume

8

Issue

44

Pub Type

Journals

Download Paper

DOI Link

Keywords

CO2 capture, Flue gas, metal-organic framework

Citation

Evans, H. , Mullangi, D. , Deng, Z. , Wang, Y. , Peh, S. , Wei, F. , Wang, J. , Brown, C. , Zhao, D. , Canepa, P. and Cheetham, A. (2022), Aluminum Formate, Al(HCOO)3: An Earth-Abundant, Scalable, and Highly Selective Material for CO2 Capture, Science Advances, [online], https://dx.doi.org/10.1126/sciadv.ade1473 (Accessed April 27, 2024)