Efficient purification of ethene by an ethane-trapping metal-organic framework
Separating ethene (C 2 H 4 ) from ethane (C 2 H 6 ) is of paramount importance and difficulty. Here we show that C 2 H 4 can be efficiently purified by trapping the inert C 2 H 6 in a judiciously designed metal-organic framework. Under ambient conditions, passing a typical cracked gas mixture (15:1...
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Published in | Nature communications Vol. 6; no. 1; p. 8697 |
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Main Authors | , , , |
Format | Journal Article |
Language | English |
Published |
London
Nature Publishing Group UK
29.10.2015
Nature Publishing Group |
Subjects | |
Online Access | Get full text |
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Summary: | Separating ethene (C
2
H
4
) from ethane (C
2
H
6
) is of paramount importance and difficulty. Here we show that C
2
H
4
can be efficiently purified by trapping the inert C
2
H
6
in a judiciously designed metal-organic framework. Under ambient conditions, passing a typical cracked gas mixture (15:1 C
2
H
4
/C
2
H
6
) through 1 litre of this C
2
H
6
selective adsorbent directly produces 56 litres of C
2
H
4
with 99.95%+ purity (required by the C
2
H
4
polymerization reactor) at the outlet, with a single breakthrough operation, while other C
2
H
6
selective materials can only produce
ca
. ⩽ litre, and conventional C
2
H
4
selective adsorbents require at least four adsorption–desorption cycles to achieve the same C
2
H
4
purity. Single-crystal X-ray diffraction and computational simulation studies showed that the exceptional C
2
H
6
selectivity arises from the proper positioning of multiple electronegative and electropositive functional groups on the ultramicroporous pore surface, which form multiple C–H···N hydrogen bonds with C
2
H
6
instead of the more polar competitor C
2
H
4
.
The separation of high purity ethene from the mixed gaseous products of cracking poses significant obstacles. Here, the authors present a metal-organic framework which, in contrast to most absorbents, selectively binds the less polar ethane thus allowing the efficient collection of the target product. |
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Bibliography: | ObjectType-Article-1 SourceType-Scholarly Journals-1 ObjectType-Feature-2 content type line 23 |
ISSN: | 2041-1723 2041-1723 |
DOI: | 10.1038/ncomms9697 |