In this work, zeolitic imidazolate framework-8 (ZIF-8), a subclass of metal organic frameworks (MOFs), was dispersed in a water-glycol solution to form a porous slurry. Using this porous slurry, a tail gas mixture containing hydrogen/propylene was separated. Experiments were performed to investigate the effects of using only the solid ZIF-8 material, a ZIF-8/water slurry, a ZIF-8/glycol slurry, or a ZIF-8/water-glycol slurry on the selectivity of the separation. The experimental results show that the slurry made from ZIF-8/water-glycol (20%) achieves good gas separation. The respective influences of the solid content, initial pressure, and temperature on the separation performance were also investigated in detail. We found that lower temperature, a ZIF-8 mass fraction of 20 wt %, and a higher operation pressure are suitable for the recovering of hydrogen from a H 2 /C 3 H 6 mixture. The selectivity of C 3 H 6 over H 2 reaches 128 at 680 kPa initial pressure. The slurries were completely reusable for at least three cycles. The structure of the ZIF-8 material was not altered after repeated separation, meaning the material can likely be reused more than three times on an industrial scale. from propylene [20]. However, these methods have several shortcomings such as high corrosion, materials cost, and energy requirements, and low capacity.In recent years, porous liquids have attracted widespread attention because of their permanent pores and flowability. James et al. [21] categorized porous liquids into three types. Type 1 is a pure liquid possessing empty cavities that can adsorb CH 4 or other inert gases [22]. Type 2 represents the dissolution of empty molecular hosts into an ionic liquid that cannot enter the host cavity of the molecules [23,24]. Type 3 involves the dispersion of a porous material in a liquid media, where the liquid molecules are distributed outside the pore networks [25,26]. In this paper, we will show that we can effectively separate H 2 from a mixture with propylene using a Type 3 porous slurry [25,27,28]. The porous slurry was made of solid zeolitic imidazolate framework-8 (ZIF-8) [29,30], a subclass of metal organic frameworks (MOFs) [31][32][33][34][35], which were dispersed into a solvent mixture of water and glycol. Using a porous slurry as the separation adsorbent is advantageous because the slurry is recyclable and can be reused after gas desorption under vacuum. In addition, unlike the adsorbents [36] commonly used in physisorption, the porous slurry can be easily handled by process engineers because it can flow and, therefore, be pumped. Another advantage is that, unlike hydrate technology, which requires extremely low temperatures [19,37], this method can be applied at relatively moderate temperatures while still producing a reasonably high hydrogen recovery rate.
Materials and Methods
MaterialsGlycol (C 2 H 6 O 2 ) of analytical grade and ZIF-8 were purchased from Sigma-Aldrich. Hydrogen (99.99%) and propylene (99.99%) were purchased from Beijing AP Beifen Gases Industry Company Limi...