Adsorption characteristics of methane on metal organic frameworks

Methane is the main constituent of Natural Gas and it can be stored in various forms. One newer and more promising method is performed by adsorption technology, which has been in the spotlight of the Energy and Chemicals industry recently. The adsorption of methane by porous materials such as Metal Organic Frameworks has gained significant attention due to its excellent adsorption abilities. Some research activities involving adsorption have been discussed in the Literature Review section of this report, but adsorption characteristics at certain temperatures with varying porous adsorbents have rarely been reported. Therefore, this Final-Year Project proposes an extension of research for investigating and examining the adsorption characteristics of various Metal Organic Frameworks at varying temperatures and pressures. The proposed research mainly focused on the synthesis and purification of adsorbents; namely HKUST-1, Maxsorb III-assisted HKUST-1 and HKUST-1 (new). HKUST-1 and Maxsorb III-assisted HKUST-1 were synthesised with acetone as the solvent while HKUST-1 (new) was synthesised with water as the solvent. The amount of methane on the porous adsorbents was evaluated by a volumetric technique under static and dynamic conditions. The experiments were conducted at temperatures ranging from 125K to 300K and at pressure up to 10 bar. Additionally, the data was fitted into adsorption isotherm models and analysed and thereafter calculations of isosteric heats of adsorption were conducted too. The experimental data suggests that HKUST-1 (new) produced the most promising results among the 3 samples. However, the adsorption uptake for all samples at ambient conditions was still far from the US DOE target of 0.5 g/g. The results also indicated that a higher adsorption uptake was achieved at lower temperatures.Bachelor of Engineering (Mechanical Engineering