Ultramicropore Engineering by Dehydration to Enable Molecular Sieving of H2 by Calcium Trimesate

Soumya Mukherjee, Shoushun Chen, Andrey A. Bezrukov, Matthew Mostrom, Victor V. Terskikh, Douglas Franz, Shi Qiang Wang, Amrit Kumar, Mansheng Chen, Brian Space, Yining Huang, Michael J. Zaworotko

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

Abstract

The high energy footprint of commodity gas purification and increasing demand for gases require new approaches to gas separation. Kinetic separation of gas mixtures through molecular sieving can enable separation by molecular size or shape exclusion. Physisorbents must exhibit the right pore diameter to enable separation, but the 0.3–0.4 nm range relevant to small gas molecules is hard to control. Herein, dehydration of the ultramicroporous metal–organic framework Ca-trimesate, Ca(HBTC)⋅H2O (H3BTC=trimesic acid), bnn-1-Ca-H2O, affords a narrow pore variant, Ca(HBTC), bnn-1-Ca. Whereas bnn-1-Ca-H2O (pore diameter 0.34 nm) exhibits ultra-high CO2/N2, CO2/CH4, and C2H2/C2H4 binary selectivity, bnn-1-Ca (pore diameter 0.31 nm) offers ideal selectivity for H2/CO2 and H2/N2 under cryogenic conditions. Ca-trimesate, the first physisorbent to exhibit H2 sieving under cryogenic conditions, could be a prototype for a general approach to exert precise control over pore diameter in physisorbents.

Original languageEnglish
Pages (from-to)16188-16194
Number of pages7
JournalAngewandte Chemie - International Edition
Volume59
Issue number37
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 7 Sep 2020

Keywords

  • crystal engineering
  • hydrogen
  • physisorption
  • porous materials
  • size-sieving

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