The objective of this work is to
study the adsorptive separation
of the biomass-derived furfural (Fur) and 5-hydroxymethylfurfural
(5-HMF). Because Fur and 5-HMF have similar ellipsoidal shapes, the
diffusion of the larger 5-HMF may be blocked by the elliptical window
of adsorbents. Thus, two zeolitic imidazolate framework (ZIF) materials
with the identical chemical composition, MAF-6 and MAF-5, were used
as spherical and ellipsoidal pore adsorbents, respectively. In the
dynamic column adsorption of a binary-component system (Fur/5-HMF,
5/5 wt %) in an aqueous solution, the adsorption amounts of Fur on
MAF-6 display a 13% decrease compared with the single-component system,
whereas the adsorption amounts of Fur on MAF-5 are identical to those
obtained in the single-component system and the amounts of adsorbed
5-HMF are almost negligible. Thus, the Fur/5-HMF selectivity is only
6.4 for MAF-6, whereas the selectivity reached 115.8 for MAF-5. The
results show that the narrow elliptical window/ellipsoidal tile of
MAF-5 enhanced separation selectivity compared with the larger circular
window/spherical cage of MAF-6. In addition, the general rate model
and density functional theory calculations further verify that the
elliptical window of MAF-5 exhibits a strong mass-transfer barrier
that must be overcome for the diffusion of the larger 5-HMF molecules.