Efficient purification of ethene by an ethane-trapping metal-organic framework

Separating ethene (C2H4) from ethane (C2H6) is of paramount importance and difficulty. Here we show that C2H4 can be efficiently purified by trapping the inert C2H6 in a judiciously designed metal-organic framework. Under ambient conditions, passing a typical cracked gas mixture (15:1 C2H4/C2H6) through 1 litre of this C2H6 selective adsorbent directly produces 56 litres of C2H4 with 99.95%+ purity (required by the C2H4 polymerization reactor) at the outlet, with a single breakthrough operation, while other C2H6 selective materials can only produce ca. ⩽ litre, and conventional C2H4 selective adsorbents require at least four adsorption-desorption cycles to achieve the same C2H4 purity. Single-crystal X-ray…

• NN
  National Natural Science Foundation of China

  Awards: 2014CB845602, 21225105, 21473260, 21290173, 21290173 and 21473260