Liquid-Phase Adsorption and Separation of Xylene Isomers by the Flexible Porous Metal–Organic Framework MIL-53(Fe)

By R. E. Osta, A. Carlin-Sinclair, N. Guillou, Richard I. Walton, F. Vermoortele, M. Maes, Dirk De Vos, F. Millange. 2012

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We report a study of the use of the porous metal–organic framework material MIL-53(Fe), FeIII(OH)0.8F0.2[O2C–C6H4–CO2], for the separation of BTEX mixtures (benzene, toluene, ethylbenzene, and the three xylene isomers). Crystal structures of the three host:guest materials MIL-53(Fe)[xylene], where xylene = the ortho, meta, or para isomer of dimethylbenzene, have been solved and refined from powder X-ray diffraction. Each exhibits a fully expanded form with a variety of host:guest and guest:guest interactions responsible for stabilizing the structure. While the ortho- and meta- isomers present a similar arrangement when occluded in the MIL-53 host, the para-xylene shows a distinctly different set of interactions with the host. Upon thermal treatment, xylenes are partially lost to give crystalline phases MIL-53(Fe)[xylene]0.5, the structures of which have also been solved. The kinetics of uptake of each xylene by MIL-53(Fe)[H2O], in which the water is replaced by the organic guest, have been studied using t...

Subfields: Electronic, Optical and Magnetic Materials, Inorganic Chemistry, Materials Chemistry

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/f2bb7e6ed1c5bd43e4398399eaaa83de38c81738