Hydrocarbon Separations in a Metal-Organic Framework with Open Iron(II) Coordination Sites

Abstract

The energy costs associated with large-scale industrial separation of light hydrocarbons by cryogenic distillation could potentially be lowered through development of selective solid adsorbents that operate at higher temperatures. Here, the metal-organic framework Fe(2)(dobdc) (dobdc(4-) : 2,5-dioxido-1,4-benzenedicarboxylate) is demonstrated to exhibit excellent performance characteristics for separation of ethylene/ethane and propylene/propane mixtures at 318 kelvin. Breakthrough data obtained for these mixtures provide experimental validation of simulations, which in turn predict high selectivities and capacities of this material for the fractionation of methane/ethane/ethylene/acetylene mixtures, removal of acetylene impurities from ethylene, and membrane-based olefin/paraffin separations. Neutron powder diffraction data confirm a side-on coordination of acetylene, ethylene, and propylene at the iron(II) centers, while also providing solid-state structural characterization of the much weaker interactions of ethane and propane with the metal.

Microporous metal-organic framework with potential for carbon dioxide capture at ambient conditions

“…Figure 3a shows a schematic of a packed bed adsorber. The breakthrough calculations were performed using the following methodologies developed and described in earlier works 40,54,55 ; the breakthrough simulation methodology has been validated by direct comparison with experimental breakthrough data in the work of Bloch 56 . Figure 3b and present typical breakthrough curves for Mg-MOF-74 and UTSA-16, respectively.…”

Photoluminescent Metal–Organic Frameworks for Gas Sensing

“…Over the past two decades, MOFs have attracted extensive interest for their great potential in many applications such as gas separation/storage,11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17 catalysis,18, 19, 20 drug delivery,21 and luminescence sensing 2, 3, 4, 22, 23. As for conventional metal complexes, photoluminescence properties of MOFs can be finely tuned by rational selection of metal ions and design of organic ligands.…”

Porous materials with pre-designed single-molecule traps for CO2 selective adsorption

“…Recently, remarkable progress has been made in this regard in the development of metal-organic materials (MOMs), such as metal-organic frameworks (MOFs) 5,6 and metal-organic polyhedra (MOPs) 7 , assembled from molecular building units. These materials possess unique properties and vast application potential [8][9][10][11][12][13][14][15][16][17][18][19][20][21][22][23][24] . The hallmark of these new materials is their modular design, which is far beyond the scope of other porous materials 22,[25][26][27][28][29][30][31][32][33][34][35][36] and allows for facile structure and property tuning.…”