An Ideal Molecular Sieve for Acetylene Removal from Ethylene with Record Selectivity and Productivity

Published

December 20, 2017

Author(s)

Bin Li, Xili Cui, Dan O'Nolan, Hui-Min Wen, Mengdie Jiang, Rajamani Krishna, Hui Wu, Rui-Biao Lin, Yu-Sheng Chen, Daqiang Yuan, Huabin Xing, Wei Zhou, Qilong Ren, Guodong Qian, Michael J. Zaworotko, Banglin Chen

Abstract

Realization of ideal molecular sieves, in which the larger gas molecules are completely blocked without sacrificing high adsorption capacities of the preferred smaller gas molecules, can significantly reduce energy costs for gas separation and purification, and thus facilitate a possible technological transformation from the traditional energy-intensive cryogenic distillation to the energy-efficient adsorbent-based separation and purification of the most widely used raw chemicals such as ethylene (C₂H₄) and propylene (C₃H₆) in the future. ^1-3^ Although extensive research endeavors have been pursued to target ideal molecular sieves among diverse porous materials including zeolites, carbon molecular sieves (CMS), metal-organic frameworks (MOFs) and covalent-organic frameworks (COFs) over the past several decades, ideal molecular sieves for separation and purification of light hydrocarbons have yet to be demonstrated. Herein we report the first example of ideal porous materials SIFSIX-14-Cu-i (also termed as UTSA-200) with ultra-fine-tuning of pore size (3.4 angstrom}A)as molecular sieves to effectively block C₂H₄ molecules but to take up a record-high amount of acetylene (C₂H₂, 58 cm³ cm^-3 under 0.01 bar and 298K) attributed to the strong binding sites on the pore surfaces towards C₂H₂. The material therefore sets up new benchmarks for both the adsorption capacity and selectivity, and thus provides the record purification capacity for removal of trace C₂H₄ with 1.18 millimoles per gram C₂H₂ uptake capacity from a 1/99 C₂H₂/C₂Y₄ mixture to produce 99.9999% pure C₂H₄, as demonstrated by experimental breakthrough curves.

Citation

Advanced Materials

Volume

29

Pub Type

Journals

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Keywords

metal organic framework, gas separation

Citation

Li, B. , Cui, X. , O'Nolan, D. , Wen, H. , Jiang, M. , Krishna, R. , Wu, H. , Lin, R. , Chen, Y. , Yuan, D. , Xing, H. , Zhou, W. , Ren, Q. , Qian, G. , Zaworotko, M. and Chen, B. (2017), An Ideal Molecular Sieve for Acetylene Removal from Ethylene with Record Selectivity and Productivity, Advanced Materials, [online], https://tsapps.nist.gov/publication/get_pdf.cfm?pub_id=923500 (Accessed April 26, 2024)