| Nov 06, 2019 | |
New MOF can take on toxic sulfur dioxide gas(Nanowerk News) An international team has developed a robust material that can selectively take in toxic sulfur dioxide gas at record concentrations and preserve it for use in chemical production. The researchers verified its performance using a combination of techniques that included X-ray experiments at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory’s (Berkeley Lab’s) Advanced Light Source (ALS). |
|
| Sulfur dioxide emissions are typically produced by power plants, other industrial facilities, and trains, ships, and heavy equipment, and can be harmful to human health and the environment. | |
| The team developed porous, cagelike, stable copper-containing molecules known as metal-organic frameworks or MOFs that are designed to separate sulfur dioxide (SO2) gas from other gases. | |
 |
|
| Illustration of sulfur dioxide captured within the MFM-170 material, as revealed by experiments at Berkeley Lab’s Advanced Light Source. (Image: Gemma Smith/Manchester University) | |
| The team exposed the MOF material, dubbed MFM-170, to simulated exhaust gases and found that it efficiently separated out SO2 from the gas mixture at elevated temperatures even in the presence of water. | |
| Existing techniques to remove SO2 from pollution streams can produce a lot of solid and liquid waste and may only remove 60-95% of the toxic gas, researchers noted, while the MOF has been shown to eliminate SO2 down to a level below 0.1 parts per million – or 99.99999% SO2-free. | |
| Their study was published in the journal Nature Materials ("Reversible coordinative binding and separation of sulfur dioxide in a robust metal–organic framework with open copper sites"). | |
| The team, led by University of Manchester scientists, used X-rays produced at the ALS to explore the detailed molecular structure of the MOF crystals. They also performed experiments at Oak Ridge National Laboratory; Diamond Light Source, ISIS Neutron and Muon Source, and Manchester University in the U.K. |
| Source: Berkeley Lab | |
|
Subscribe to a free copy of one of our daily Nanowerk Newsletter Email Digests with a compilation of all of the day's news. |