Zeolitic Octahedral Metal Oxides with Ultra-Small Micropores for C2 Hydrocarbon Separation

Angew Chem Int Ed Engl. 2021 Aug 9;60(33):18328-18334. doi: 10.1002/anie.202106625. Epub 2021 Jul 2.

Abstract

Separation of C2 hydrocarbons, C2 H6 , C2 H4 , and C2 H2 , remains significant challenges in chemical industry. However, there are only few adsorbents that can effectively isolate C2 hydrocarbons from their mixtures particularly at a high temperature. Herein, we design a zeolitic octahedral metal oxide based on ϵ-Keggin polyoxometalates with metal ion linkers. Single gas adsorption of the material shows the different adsorption performances for the C2 hydrocarbons and the strong interaction of the material with the C2 hydrocarbons. Dynamic competitive adsorption experiments show that the material efficiently separates each of the binary C2 hydrocarbon mixtures and even the ternary C2 hydrocarbon mixtures with high selectivity. The material keeps high separation performance even the temperature was increased to 85 °C. The material is stable and is able to be reused without loss of the separation performance.

Keywords: C2 hydrocarbon separation; high temperature separation; zeolitic octahedral metal oxide; ϵ-Keggin POMs.