(397i) Understanding the Performance of Slipped Covalent Organic Frameworks for CH4 Storage and CO2:CH4 Separation Using Fixed Bed Adsorption Column
AIChE Annual Meeting
2017
2017 Annual Meeting
Separations Division
Poster Session: Fundamentals and Applications of Adsorption and Ion Exchange
Tuesday, October 31, 2017 - 3:15pm to 4:45pm
Methane (CH4) is a major component of natural gas and used as a replacement of petroleum in automobile applications, due to economic and environmental concerns. For the on-board storage of methane, adsorption in nanoporous materials offers energy efficient solution compared to compression and liquefication. Therefore, various nanoporous materials like zeolites, metal organic frameworks (MOFs) and covalent organic frameworks (COFs) are being synthesized. Among these materials, COFs have the advantage of light weight and low density, which make them a suitable candidate for light weight gas separation and high gravimetric adsorption applications. To improve the CH4 storage and separation applications of COFs we explored the effect of slipping between COF layers. We first obtained the CH4 adsorption isotherms in recently synthesized TpPa1, TpBD and polyimide COFs (PI-COFs) using grand canonical Monte Carlo simulations and assessed their CH4 storage performance. Further, we obtained the CO2 adsorption isotherms followed by CO2/CH4 adsorption selectivity calculations using ideal adsorbed solution theory (IAST). We also modelled the transient breakthrough characteristics for CO2:CH4 separation using fixed bed adsorption column. Our results show huge variation in the CH4 adsorption and separation performance of COFs with slipping. These results are explained using energy landscape, density distribution and pore characteristics. Our study suggests the potential use of slipped COFs for CH4 storage and separation via fixed bed adsorption column.