Purification of light hydrocarbons (C1-C4) is of significant importance for the production of high-purity valuable feedstocks in the petrochemical industry. However, their structural and chemical similarities have proven daunting challenges to incumbent separation technologies, which are energy- and capital-intensive. Approaches capable of discerning and exploiting minute differences in isomeric hydrocarbons, in particular, may provide solutions to this problem. Metal-organic frameworks (MOFs) integrating the merits of tunable pore size at sub-angstrom scale and pore chemistry in confined spaces have presented promising prospects in adsorptive separation to recognize the minor differences in gas molecules via the judicious design and functionalization. Of special interest is the subclass of metal-organic frameworks (MOFs) with pore aperture sizes below 4–7 Å, namely ultramicroporous MOFs, which show great prospects for addressing key separation challenges pertaining to energy and environmental sustainability, especially for the separation of light hydrocarbons (alkyne/alkene, olefin/paraffin, olefin/olefin, etc.). Fine-tuning the pore chemistry in a confined pore environment to judiciously maximum the host-guest interactions is the main issue that should be solved to enhance the separation performances but extremely challenging due to the similar dimensions between the gas molecules and pore spaces. Herein, we demonstrate strategies to control the pore chemistry in ultra-microporous MOFs for light hydrocarbon separation, which opens new avenues for the design of advanced porous materials in gas separation.

Fine-tuning of pore chemistry in confined pore environment for efficient light hydrocarbon separation

ACS Fall 2021

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