Separation and Purification of Hydrocarbons with Porous Materials

Abstract

is currently a postdoctoral researcher in Prof. Weckhuysen's group at Utrecht University. She received her PhD degree in Industrial Catalysis from the Dalian Institute of Chemical Physics, Chinese Academy of Sciences (2020) under the direction of Prof. Yunpeng Xu and Prof. Zhongmin Liu. Her current research interests include developing MOF thin films for ethene polymerization and gas adsorption. Bert M. Weckhuysen obtained his PhD degree from K. U. Leuven (Belgium) in 1995. After postdoctoral stays at Lehigh University (PA, USA) and Texas A&M University (TX, USA), he became full Professor at Utrecht University (The Netherlands) in 2000. His research focuses on the development and use of in situ and operando spectroscopy for studying solid catalysts under realistic reaction conditions at different length scales. Scheme 1. Timeline summarizing the trends in adsorptive hydrocarbon separation and purification with various porous materials over the latest three decades.

Carbon dioxide capture with zeotype materials

“…200,326 For instance, K-MER zeolites showed no CH 4 molecules adsorption with single component isotherms due to the shrinkage of pores induced by K + exchange, but the material adsorbed CH 4 in a flow gas mixture of CO 2 /CH 4 as the interaction of CO 2 with K + triggered the narrow-to-wide change of the pore windows. 34 Therefore, performance evaluation using mixture gas adsorption isotherms 327 or fixed bed measurements 86 is highly encouraged for future research for zeolites-based carbon capture (this was also needed for the evaluation of porous materials for the separation of other small molecules 29 ). These types of experiments will not only show real competitive adsorption performance of zeolites, but also provide important properties such as kinetics, recyclability, etc.…”

“…2,26 Zeolites are crystalline, aluminosilicate microporous materials that have a proven track record of use in industry for catalysis, adsorption and separation. 27,28 A few of the important features of zeolites for CO 2 capture are: 11,29 (1) zeolites have been successfully commercialized for applications in catalysis and separation that can function under harsh conditions, 30,31 (2) CO 2 molecules are primarily/exclusively physisorbed in zeolites, thus providing potential for high recyclability at low temperatures, (3) the adsorption kinetics of zeolites are typically faster than chemisorbents, 32 (4) high selectivity of CO 2 is possible with zeolites (depending on the make-up of the other components) due to tunable CO 2 -zeolite interaction and molecular sieving effects, 33,34 (5) high adjustability for adsorption properties due to the abundance of cation exchangeable sites in their pore networks. 11 As such, zeolites are promising sorbents for post-combustion capture and air pre-purification, and are either in use or being explored in a number of applications including air quality in the international space station (ISS), 11,[35][36][37] post-combustion processes 38 and DAC.…”