@article{Liu2022, 
author = {Ying Liu and Qianqian Xu and Lihang Chen and Changhua Song and Qiwei Yang and Zhiguo Zhang and Dan Lu and Yiwen Yang and Qilong Ren and Zongbi Bao},
title = {Hydrogen-bonded metal-nucleobase frameworks for highly selective capture of ethane/propane from methane and methane/nitrogen separation},
year = {2022},
journal = {Nano Research},
volume = {15},
number = {8},
pages = {7695-7702},
keywords = {methane, adsorption separation, hydrogen-bonded frameworks, natural gas},
url = {https://www.sciopen.com/article/10.1007/s12274-022-4352-0},
doi = {10.1007/s12274-022-4352-0},
abstract = {The separation of light hydrocarbons, including C2H6 and C3H8, is essential to natural gas upgrading. Meanwhile, N2 removal from CH4 is also crucial to concentrating low-quality coalbed methane, but the adsorption process is challenging because of the close kinetic diameter. This work reports two hydrogen-bonded metal-nucleobase frameworks (HOF-ZJU-201 and HOF-ZJU-202) capable of efficiently separating C3H8/CH4, C2H6/CH4, and CH4/N2. Due to strong affinity for C3H8 and C2H6, the low-pressure capacity for C3H8 (5 kPa) and C2H6 (10 kPa) of HOF-ZJU-201a exceeds most adsorbents. The ideal adsorbed solution theory (IAST) selectivity of C3H8/CH4 and C2H6/CH4 is 119 and 45 at ambient conditions. According to density functional theory calculations, surface polarization environments formed by electron-rich anions and electron-deficient purine heterocyclic rings contribute to the selective capture of C3H8 and C2H6 with greater polarizability. Furthermore, the high CH4 adsorption capacity (1.73 mmol/g for HOF-ZJU-201a and 1.50 mmol/g for HOF-ZJU-202a at 298 K and 1.0 bar) and excellent CH4/N2 selectivity (6.0 for HOF-ZJU-201 at 298 K), as well as dynamic breakthrough experiments of binary CH4/N2 gas mixture implied their efficacy in the concentration of low-quality coalbed methane.}
}