Highly selective adsorption of CO over N2 on CuCl-loaded SAPO-34 adsorbent

Carbon monoxide (CO)/N2 separation is of importance for current chemical industry. However, CO/N2 separation remains a challenge due to the similar molecular size and the small variance of volatility of CO and N2. In this work, molecular sieve SAPO-34 was loaded with CuCl by monolayer dispersion method for the preparation of Cu(I) containing adsorbents. The resulted adsorbents were characterized via nitrogen adsorption/desorption at 77 K, X-ray fluorescence (XRF) and X-ray diffraction (XRD). The results indicated that CuCl was successful loaded into the molecular sieve and well-dispersed. CO and N2 single component adsorption isotherms were recorded under 298 K, 308 K and 318 K by using volumetric method. One of the CuCl-loaded SAPO-34 adsorbent exhibited a very high CO adsorption capacity of 1.84 mmol/g at 100 kPa, 298 K and high CO/N2 selectivity.