Porous materials with suitable pore size and dual‐functional sites for benchmark one‐step ethylene purification

Abstract

Multiple impurities removal represents one of the most daunting challenges in gas purification, but the attainment of efficient adsorptive separation is hindered by the difficulty in designing adsorbents that could simultaneously capture different impurities. Herein, we revealed a molecular trap within Zn‐trz‐ox (trz = 1,2,4‐triazole; ox = oxalic acid) that featured positive H and negative O sites, and the suitable pore size, which exhibited remarkable one‐step C2H4 purification performance directly from quaternary C2H4/C2H2/C2H6/CO2 mixtures. The separation selectivities of C2H4 with respect to CO2, C2H2, and C2H6 are 9.8, 2.6, and 2.5, higher than the sole adsorbent yet reported. Meanwhile, polymer grade C2H4 (≥99.95%) could be directly obtained with record C2H4 productivity of 1.5 mol kg−1, over 10 times higher than that of the previous benchmark material. The deep insight into the binding behavior revealed by simulation studies offers important clues for the design of advanced adsorbent for multiple impurities capture.