Sorption of Methane and Carbon Dioxide on Nano Porous Zinc Carboxylate Metal-organic Framework

Abstract

Zinc (Ⅱ) tricarboxylate (Zn-BTC) with metal-organic framework (MOF) has been synthesized for the first time under solvothermal conditions and has been tested as an adsorbent for methane and carbon dioxide at standard temperature and pressure. The adsorbent was characterized by means of X-ray diffraction(XRD), Brunauer-Emmet-Teller (BET), Fourier transform infrared (FT-IR) and scanning electron microscopy (SEM). Sorption capacity of the methane and carbon dioxide on Zn-BTC in the range of pressure 1-20 bar and at 298 K was investigated by volumetric measurement. This results show that Zn-BTC has higher sorption capacity methane at 20 bar compared to carbon dioxide. The high sorption capacity of this adsorbent for methane is attributed to large number of open metal site and the appropriate pore diameter of framework that caused higher interaction for the methane at between methane and carbon dioxide, suggests that (Zn-BTC) is a potential adsorbent for the separation of methane from gas mixtures.