Materials that act as highly effective sorbents of chemical warfare agents (CWAs) will commonly exhibit high surface areas. Mesoporous compounds are useful sorbents here as they can have very high surface areas to interact with the adsorbate, while still having sufficiently large particles diameters to minimize pressure drop from gas flow through the sorbent bed. However, a potential problem arises as the combination of small pores and large particle sizes could slow mass transfer through the pores, thereby decreasing the overall efficiency of the material to adsorb CWAs. To investigate this effect we employ Fixed Feed Temperature Programmed Modulation (FFTPM) to determine rate constants for the adsorption of methanol and the CWA surrogate, DMMP, onto a nonreactive mesoporous silica, SBA16, of various particle diameters. The experimental determination of rate constants on different particle sizes indicated that internal mass transfer was not limiting for methanol or DMMP adsorption to SBA16 up to 2 mm in diameter. This is a helpful insight for the design and production of mesoporous materials to be used in CWA removal applications.

Adsorption kinetics within mesoporous SBA16 to probe mass transfer limits for design of chemical warfare agent sorbents

ACS Spring Meeting 2021

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