PNNL

Abstract

The adsorption behavior of a series of fluorocarbon derivatives was examined on a set of microporous metal organic framework (MOF) sorbents and another set of hierarchical mesoporous MOFs. The microporous M-DOBDC (M = Ni, Co) showed a saturation uptake capacity for R12 of over 4 mmol/g at a very low relative saturation pressure (P/Po) of 0.02. In contrast, the mesoporous MOF MIL-101 showed an exceptionally high uptake capacity reaching over 14 mmol/g at P/Po of 0.4. Adsorption affinity in terms of mass loading and isosteric heats of adsorption were found to generally correlate with the polarizability of the refrigerant with R12 > R22 > R13 > R14 > methane. These results suggest the possibility of exploiting MOFs for separation of azeotropic mixtures of fluorocarbons and use in eco-friendly fluorocarbon-based adsorption cooling and refrigeration applications.