(146c) Efficient and Sustainable Manufacturing of MOF-Polymer Composites

Over the past decades, significant research has shown that manufacturing MOF-polymer composites is a promising strategy for improving its practical adaptability in storage, separation, and catalysis applications since unshaped MOF powders are not appropriate for deployment in engineering processes. However, there are some gaps between laboratory-synthesized and commercial-deployed MOF-polymer composites: most MOFs are synthesized in lab in milligram/gram scale under batch reactions and are then used to manufacture composites in a discontinuous process; it requires a large volume of hazardous solvents during the solvothermal synthesis, which posts more environmental issues and increases material costs.

In this work, we propose a continuously one-step, rapid, and solvent-free approach to manufacture MOF-polymer composite directly from solid reagents (polymer matrix, metal irons, and ligands) via extrusion that can reach a few kilograms per hour scale compared with conventional method in grams/batch/day. As a result, this approach allows MOF-polymer manufacture process to circumvent the traditional multi-step, low scalability efficiency, high solvent demand, and time and energy consuming methods. For the first time, this environmental-friendly approach has been demonstrated in a case study of ZIF8-polypropylene composites using Process 11 parallel twin-screw extruder. A further study on different polymers with various MOFs are also performed to validate this idea. The effects of the extrusion parameters on the MOF dispersion efficiency and scale-up risk analysis within the polymer matrix will be studied in detail to investigate an optimal manufacturing condition.