Metal-Organic Framework-Polyacrylonitrile Composite Beads for Xenon Capture

Brian J Riley; Saehwa Chong; Wenbin Kuang; Tamas Varga; Ahmed S Helal; Mitchell Galanek; Ju Li; Zayne J Nelson; Praveen K Thallapally

doi:10.1021/acsami.0c13717

Metal-Organic Framework-Polyacrylonitrile Composite Beads for Xenon Capture

ACS Appl Mater Interfaces. 2020 Oct 7;12(40):45342-45350. doi: 10.1021/acsami.0c13717. Epub 2020 Sep 24.

Authors

Brian J Riley¹, Saehwa Chong¹, Wenbin Kuang¹, Tamas Varga¹, Ahmed S Helal², Mitchell Galanek³, Ju Li², Zayne J Nelson¹, Praveen K Thallapally¹

Affiliations

¹ Pacific Northwest National Laboratory, 902 Battelle Blvd, Richland, Washington 99354, United States.
² Department of Nuclear Science and Engineering and Department of Materials Science and Engineering, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, Massachusetts 02139, United States.
³ Office of Environment, Health & Safety, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, Massachusetts 02139, United States.

PMID: 32910854
DOI: 10.1021/acsami.0c13717

Abstract

Mechanically robust forms of HKUST-1 metal-organic frameworks (MOFs) were fabricated by embedding the MOF crystals in a passive polyacrylonitrile (PAN) matrix at different MOF loadings of 10-90 mass %. PAN is highly porous and acts as a scaffold that holds the active MOF adsorbent in place. These MOF-PAN composites were then evaluated for capturing Xe. Data presented herein show that the PAN matrix does not notably interfere with the Xe capture process, where the Xe capacities scale somewhat linearly with the increase in MOF loadings within the composites. Also, γ radiation exposures to the composites revealed that they are highly tolerant to these types of radiation fields.

Keywords: composite materials; metal−organic frameworks; noble gas capture; radiation resistance; used nuclear fuel reprocessing; xenon.