By Michael Zaworotko et al.

Abstract

Removal of CO2 from CO gas mixtures is a necessary but challenging step during production of ultra-pure CO as processed from either steam reforming of hydrocarbons or CO2 reduction. In this contribution, two hybrid ultramicroporous materials (HUMs), SIFSIX-3-Ni and TIFSIX-2-Cu-i, which are known to exhibit strong affinity for CO2, were examined with respect to their performance for this separation. The single-gas CO sorption isotherms of these HUMs were measured for the first time and are indicative of weak affinity for CO and benchmark CO2/CO selectivity (>4000 for SIFSIX-3-Ni). This prompted us to conduct dynamic breakthrough experiments and compare performance with other porous materials. Ultra-pure CO (99.99%) was thereby obtained from CO gas mixtures containing both trace (1%) and bulk (50%) levels of CO2 in a one-step physisorption-based separation process.