Synthesis of hydrophobic CuCl/LaA modified by butyltrichlorosilane towards enhanced CO adsorption under humid environment

Cuprous ion modified molecular sieves have been considered as promising CO adsorbents in gas separation or purification industry. However, it persists as a significant challenge to overcome the unfavorable effect of water vapor in the work environment on gas adsorption and separation. Herein, we propose a synthetic strategy using rare earth element La as an additive to form LaOLa coordination bonds followed by surface silanization treatment to construct a hydrophobic SiOSi barrier to significantly improve the stability of Cu+ under humid atmosphere. By successively introducing La3+ and Cu+ into zeolite 5A, CuCl/LaA adsorbents were prepared via ion exchange and solid dispersion methods. And then by silanization modification using toluene as solvent and butyltrichlorosilane (BTS) as hydrophobic agent, hydrophobic CuCl/LaA-BTS adsorbents were prepared. Dynamic adsorption investigation demonstrated that the as-prepared CuCl/LaA-BTS adsorbents possessed hydrophobic surface and consequently the adsorption capacity of CO was enhanced significantly under humid atmosphere. The CO adsorption breakthrough capacity over CuCl/LaA-BTS attained 0.34 mg/g, which was 5.7 times higher than that of zeolite 5A at 40 °C, atmospheric pressure and a relative humidity of RH = 55 %. Moreover, the CO adsorption capacity of CuCl/LaA-BTS retained 0.31 mg/g after four regeneration cycles. This work provides an effective and novel route for synthesizing highly stable cuprous ion modified zeolite adsorbents.