Expanding nonpolar pore surfaces in stable ethane-selective MOF to boost ethane/ethylene separation performance

Ethylene is an important raw material in chemical production. Reducing energy consumption by one-step separation of ethylene from C2H6/C2H4 mixtures is a significant and challenging task. Designing a material with high C2H6 selectivity and adsorption capacity is very demanding. Here, we report a method to improve the performance of C2H6/C2H4 separation. By changing the carboxylic ligand in UiO-67, we synthesized a new material called UiO-67-BN. At room temperature, compared with the base material UiO-67, the optimized material UiO-67-BN has a significant increase in the adsorption capacity of C2H6 and the selectivity of C2H6/C2H4 due to its suitable pore size and numerous non-polar aromatic rings on the pore surface. Theoretical calculation results reveal that the optimized material can provide more C-H∙∙∙π interactions with C2H6. The breakthrough experiments demonstrate that UiO-67-BN can efficiently capture C2H6 from 50/50 and 1/99 C2H6/C2H4 mixtures at various conditions and realize one-step acquisition of C2H4.