A highly stable metal-organic framework with well-matched pore cavity
for efficient acetylene separation
Abstract
Acetylene, an important petrochemical feedstock, is the starting
chemical to produce many polymer products. Separating C2H2 from its
by-product mixtures is still an energy-consuming process and remains
challenging. Here, we present a metal-organic
framework[Zn2(bpy)(btec)], with a desirable pore geometry and highly
stable framework, which demonstrated a high separation performance of
C2H2 from simulated mixtures. With the desirable pore dimension and
hydrogen bonding sites, Zn2(bpy)(btec) shows by far the both highest
C2H2/CO2 and C2H2/CO2 uptake ratios, very high adsorption selectivities
and moderately C2H2 uptake of 93.5 cm3•cm−3 under 298 K and 1 atm. Not
only straightforwardly produced high purity of C2H4, but also recovered
high purity of C2H2 (>98%) in the regeneration process
(>92% recovery). More notably, Zn2(bpy)(btec) can be
straightforwardly synthesized at a large scale under environmentally
friendly conditions, and its good water/chemical stability,
thermostability, and cyclic stability highlight the promise of this
molecular sieving material for industrial C2H2 separation.