(255b) Adsorption Equilibrium And Kinetics Of Hydrogen In Metal Organic Framework (Mof)-5

The short life of fossil fuel along with severe pollution to environments puts the traditional automobiles in the backburner as the reliable means for future-day transport systems. Fuel cell, driven by hydrogen gas, has become a promising member as the source of alternative energy, but the lack of economic, efficient, endurable and safe on-board hydrogen storage system provides a mammoth task for present day technologist to put fuel-cell driven cars into the competitive position with the traditional ones. A worldwide effort to bring up effective means for storing hydrogen gas has resulted in several methodologies and materials, but none of them could suffice to the actual need. Until recently, a new kind of porous crystalline material, known as Metal Organic Framework (MOF) has gained huge potential as a hydrogen storing material. The flexible and case-specific tailoring of basic molecular architecture and functional groups, large pore size, very high specific surface area and selective uptake of small gas molecules have provided MOF a huge benchmark as promising hydrogen storage material. The so called reticular synthesis (logical construction of networks from molecular building blocks) has resulted in six ?catenated' MOFs (isoreticular MOF, IRMOF) reported in literature, amongst which MOF-5 (or IRMOF-1) has become most interesting member of the family.

The present study focuses the characteristics and hydrogen adsorption criteria of MOF-5 (IRMOF-1). With little modification based on the published synthesis procedures, the newly synthesized MOF-5 exhibits Langmuir surface area above 4000 m2/gm with dihydrogen uptake capacity around 1.45 wt% up to one atmosphere pressure and 77K. Characterized by type-1 adsoprtion, sharp increase in the isotherm curve up to the atmospheric pressure indicates that the material is hardly saturated and is expected to have more uptakes at the elevated level of pressure. It is the highest storage capacity ever reported by a crystalline microporous material at low pressure level.