Three different commercial metal organic frameworks (MOFs) of Cu-BTC, Fe-BTC and ZIF-8 have been characterized by multiple techniques including CO 2 adsorption/desorption, scanning electron microscopy (SEM), transmission electron microscopy (TEM), X-ray diffraction (XRD) and X-ray absorption fine structure (XAFS). Particularly, the MOFs powders were sealed inside quartz sample tubes for each step of CO 2 adsorption/desorption, and were sequentially measured for XAFS to identify the short-range structural evolutions on investigated metals (Cu, Fe, Zn). According to the data analyses on X-ray absorption near edge spectroscope (XANES) and extended X-ray absorption fine structure (EXAFS), we can demonstrate that both electronic and local structures of MOFs were almost unchanged between fresh samples and those under the activated/adsorbed/desorbed conditions. This indicates that the CO 2 adsorption of MOFs is mainly governed by the physical driving force.On the other hand, the chemical transformation, i. e. elimination of water in MOFs structure by the activation (13.3 kPa, 473 K, 12 h), was found for Cu-BTC only.KEYWORDS: Metal organic frameworks (MOFs), CO 2 capture, Adsorption mechanism, X-ray absorption fine structure (XAFS), physical and chemical transformations.