Valuing Metal–Organic Frameworks for Postcombustion Carbon Capture: A Benchmark Study for Evaluating Physical Adsorbents

The development of practical solutions for the energy-efficient capture of carbon dioxide is of prime importance and continues to attract intensive research interest. Conceivably, the implementation of adsorption-based processes using different cycling modes, e.g., pressure-swing adsorption or temperature-swing adsorption, offers great prospects to address this challenge. Practically, the successful deployment of practical adsorption-based technologies depends on the development of made-to-order adsorbents expressing mutually two compulsory requisites: i) high selectivity/affinity for CO₂ and ii) excellent chemical stability in the presence of impurities. This study presents a new comprehensive experimental protocol apposite for assessing the prospects of a given physical adsorbent for carbon capture under flue gas stream conditions. The protocol permits: i) the baseline performance of commercial adsorbents such as zeolite 13X, activated carbon versus liquid amine scrubbing to be ascertained, and ii) a standardized evaluation of the best reported metal–organic framework (MOF) materials for carbon dioxide capture from flue gas to be undertaken. This extensive study corroborates the exceptional CO₂ capture performance of the recently isolated second-generation fluorinated MOF material, NbOFFIVE-1-Ni, concomitant with an impressive chemical stability and a low energy for regeneration. Essentially, the NbOFFIVE-1-Ni adsorbent presents the best compromise by satisfying all the required metrics for efficient CO₂ scrubbing.

The prospects of physical adsorbent for carbon capture under flue gas stream conditions are assessed by a new experimental protocol, which is implemented. This protocol confirms that the NbOFFIVE-1-Ni adsorbent presents the best compromise by satisfying all the required metrics for efficient CO₂ scrubbing when compared to the mature aqueous amines, emerging amine-supported materials, reference solid adsorbents, and metal–organic framework materials in the open literature.

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