Experimentally Verified Alkane Adsorption Isotherms in Nanoporous Materials from Literature Meta-Analysis

Identification of independent experimental replicate measurements of well-defined physical properties provides a useful way to assess the reproducibility of literature reports of these properties. Prior meta-analysis of this kind for single-component adsorption of CO2 and alcohols in nanoporous materials showed that ∼20% of reported isotherms for these molecules were inconsistent with available replicate measurements. In this paper, we extend this analysis to the single-component adsorption of alkanes in nanoporous materials using a collection of 2998 experimental isotherms. Among these isotherms, 846 replicates were identified and analyzed. Many more replicates are available for CH4 adsorption than for any other alkane. Our analysis finds that 15% of the replicate alkane isotherms are inconsistent with other replicate measurements. After discarding these outlier isotherms we report graphical and numerical consensus isotherms for 93 independent combinations of adsorbate, adsorbent, and temperature as well as an assessment of another 124 independent systems for which two replicate isotherms are available.