Efficient purification of ethene by an ethane-trapping metal-organic framework
Citations Over TimeTop 1% of 2015 papers
Abstract
Separating ethene (C2H4) from ethane (C2H6) is of paramount importance and difficulty. Here we show that C2H4 can be efficiently purified by trapping the inert C2H6 in a judiciously designed metal-organic framework. Under ambient conditions, passing a typical cracked gas mixture (15:1 C2H4/C2H6) through 1 litre of this C2H6 selective adsorbent directly produces 56 litres of C2H4 with 99.95%+ purity (required by the C2H4 polymerization reactor) at the outlet, with a single breakthrough operation, while other C2H6 selective materials can only produce ca. ⩽ litre, and conventional C2H4 selective adsorbents require at least four adsorption-desorption cycles to achieve the same C2H4 purity. Single-crystal X-ray diffraction and computational simulation studies showed that the exceptional C2H6 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 C2H6 instead of the more polar competitor C2H4.
Related Papers
- → Drying characteristics of fine powders in an inert medium circulating fluidized bed with binary inert media(2016)6 cited
- → Receiving finely divided metal powder by inert gas atomization(2018)13 cited
- → Preparation of spectrographically pure inert gases used in the investigation of the physico-mechanical properties of metals(1968)1 cited
- Degassing effect of preheated inert gas on aluminum(2010)
- Generatori inertnog plina(2020)