Computational screening of ZIFs for CO₂separations

Abstract

Using molecular simulations, we studied a diverse collection of zeolite–imidazolate frameworks (ZIFs) to evaluate their performances in adsorption- and membrane-based gas separations. Molecular simulations were performed for both single-component gases (CH4, CO2, H2 and N2) and binary gas mixtures (CO2/CH4, CO2/N2, CO2/H2 and CH4/H2) to predict the intrinsic and mixture selectivities of ZIFs. These two selectivities were compared to discuss the importance of multi-component mixture effects on making predictions about the separation performance of a material. Gas separation performances of ZIFs were compared with other nanoporous materials and our results showed that several ZIFs can outperform well-known zeolites and metal–organic frameworks in CO2 separations. Several other properties of ZIFs such as gas permeability, working capacity and sorbent selection parameter were computed to identify the most promising materials in adsorption- and membrane-based separation of CO2/CH4, CO2/N2, CO2/H2 and CH4/H2.