| dc.description.abstract | Materials technology, with the focus of discovery of new materials which are tailor-designed with a very particular set of properties suitable for application, has provided essential developments for the modern society that we live in today. A class of materials that have emerged during the last two decades with promising properties suitable for a wide range of potential applications is metal-organic frameworks (MOFs). MOFs are composed of inorganic and organic building blocks where repeating entities of these building blocks in three dimensions lead to periodic arrays of coordinated inorganic species with well-defined pores in the angstrom to nanometre scale. MOFs have gained attention because of their large specific surface areas and pore volumes which can be utilized for the capture, storage, and separation of fluids. In this project, the crystal structures of four members in the M2(abdc)2(dabco) series (M = Co, Ni, Cu, Zn, abdc = 2-aminobenzene-1,4-dicarboxylate, dabco = 1,4-diazabicyclo[2.2.2] octane) are determined from synchrotron powder X-ray diffraction (PXRD) data. The M2(abdc)2(dabco) materials are investigated for their ability to adsorb and selective separate components in two-component mixtures. Of particular interest is the purification of the climate hazardous CO2 from flue gas streams, along with light hydrocarbon separation. This has been done with investigating the M2(abdc)2(dabco) materials adsorption performance of CO2, CH4, N2, O2, C2H6, and C2H4 and deriving the selectivity of CO2 from CH4, N2, and O2, and of C2H6 from C2H4, and CH4 using the Ideal Adsorbed Solution Theory (IAST). The M2(abdc)2(dabco) materials and CPO-27-Co (CPO = Coordination Polymer of Oslo, also abbreviated Co2(dobdc), and Co-MOF-74, where dobdc = 2,5-dioxidobenzene-1,4dicarboxylate) are also investigated for their ability to protect against the very useful, but harmful, NH3. This has been done with breakthrough experiments of these materials. Fourier transform infrared (FT-IR) spectra of CPO-27-Co exposed to ammonia was collected to compliment the breakthrough experiments on this material. | |
