(3bc) Green Chemistry: Metal Organic Frameworks (MOFs) for CO2 Separation and Energy Storage

The capture of CO₂ from fossil fuel combustion flue gas is the focus of significant research efforts. The existing technologies are extremely energy intensive, including amine absorption and pressure-swing adsorption. Metal-organic frameworks (MOF) are strong candidates as size-selective, high-capacity materials for separation of CO₂ and other gases. MOFs exhibit nanoporous crystalline structure in which organic linker molecules self-assemble with metal cations to form extended crystals with well-defined pore size, high surface area, low framework density, and thermal stability. These properties make MOFs an attractive alternative to traditional zeolite materials for gas separation in membrane separation technologies.

     In principle, a potentially infinite number of MOFs with various combinations of organic linker and metal cation present opportunity to tailor pore structure, size, and functionality for CO₂ capture from flue gas. many MOFs are unstable in water vapor and acidic gases and the principles for designing water-stable MOFs are unknown. Most previous work reports only single gas adsorption capacity with a small number of samples, which limits the fast selection of promising candidates among the huge number of the available MOFs. Our experimental approach assesses relevant adsorption properties in a high-throughput mode and also directly examines the stability of materials with respect to humidity and acid gas exposure.

    In addition to the above postdoc research, this poster will include my phd research with regard to molecule transport through anisotropic phase of liquid crystals, especially liquid crystal supported membranes for enantiomer separation.