Theoretical Study of CH4 and CO2 Separation by IRMOFs

Porous materials such as isoreticular metal-organic frameworks (IRMOFs) can be applied in several areas that explore the physical adsorption. An area that has gained prominence is fuel gas storage, as it provides the storage of a large amount of gas at low pressure and the purification of combustible gas due to the selectivity of the different chemical environments of its pores. IRMOFs represent an ideal study group due to their wide range of pore sizes resulting from the use of different organic ligands. In this context, exploring IRMOFs that adsorb more efficiently stands out, mainly for optimizing the ligand, pressure, and temperature. This work focused on the adsorption and separation of CH4 and CO2 using various IRMOFs. The results suggest that IRMOF-6 is the most suitable for separation and purification and that enhanced purification occurs when the temperature is reduced and the system pressure is increased. This better performance is associated with the higher adsorption energies for this MOF, with CO2 being higher than CH4, which tends to become even more evident when the system pressure increases.