Metal–organic frameworks for petroleum-based platform compound separations

Abstract

The advancement of separation technology is not only conducive to lowering energy consumption, but also opens an avenue to obtain the world's key resources. Metal–organic frameworks (MOFs), a novel type of porous materials, have unique advantages in separation and purification compared with traditional adsorbents and separation technologies, especially in the separation of petroleum-based platform compounds, owing to their advantages of easy structure regulation and functionalization. Significant advancements have been achieved in the separation of binary component petroleum-based platform compounds based on MOFs. However, industrial gas mixtures often exist in multiple components. In contrast to the rapid development of binary mixture separations, the separation of ternary and even multi-component mixtures is much more difficult and rarely achieved with a single material. This review briefly introduces the adsorptive separation technology and its mechanism based on MOFs. Next, recent advances in MOFs for the separation of multiple-component petroleum-based platform compounds (C₂H₂/C₂H₄/C₂H₆/CO₂, C₃H₄/C₃H₆/C₃H₈, butane/butene/isobutene/1,3-butadiene, trans-2-pentene/1-pentene/isoprene, n-hexane/2-methylpentane/3-methylpentane/2,2-dimethylbutane/2,3-dimethylbutane, o-xylene/m-xylene/p-xylene/ethylbenzene, etc.) are presented to guide more complex chemical separation processes. Furthermore, inherent obstacles and future development prospects from academia to eventual industrial implementation are presented. Based on adsorptive separation technology, we are committed to exploring an alternative separation route that is energy-efficient and environmentally friendly and strives to achieve the high-efficiency separation of multi-component petroleum-based platform compounds.