In Situ Synthesis of Hierarchical Porous Zr-MOFs on Columnar Activated Carbon and Application in Toxic Gas Adsorption

Metal organic frameworks (MOFs) have been explored as adsorption materials owing to their diversity, controllable structure, high specific surface area, and abundant active sites. However, the shaping of MOFs has become a critical issue hindering their commercial application. A binder or high pressure is commonly used in traditional powder shaping, causing pores to be blocked or collapsed and porosity to be decreased, eventually leading to the degradation of adsorption performance. In this paper, Zr-MOFs were in situ grown on a columnar activated carbon (CAC) matrix, and a series of Zr-MOFs/CAC composites were prepared. The adsorption properties for SO2 and NO2 were measured by dynamic adsorption tests, and the Wheel–Jonas model was used to calculate the saturated adsorption capacity. Abundant mesopores can be formed between MOF crystals and activated carbon particles, and the mesoporosity of Zr-MOFs/CAC composites reached over 50%. Owing to the abundant mesoporous, increased activated sites as well as the synergistic effect between MOFs and activated carbon, the as-obtained HP-Zr-MOFs/CAC exhibited the best adsorption performance both for SO2 and NO2, which are 34.2 and 17.4 mg g–1, respectively, while the adsorption capacities of CAC for SO2 and NO2 are 20.9 and 6.6 mg g–1, respectively. The outstanding performance and facile synthesis process of HP-Zr-MOFs/CAC composites could provide ideas to develop other hierarchical porous MOFs/activated carbon composites.