Nanoporous Boron Nitride as Exceptionally Thermally Stable Adsorbent: Role in Efficient Separation of Light Hydrocarbons

Dipendu Saha; Gerassimos Orkoulas; Samuel Yohannan; Hoi Chun Ho; Ercan Cakmak; Jihua Chen; Soydan Ozcan

doi:10.1021/acsami.7b01889

Nanoporous Boron Nitride as Exceptionally Thermally Stable Adsorbent: Role in Efficient Separation of Light Hydrocarbons

Dipendu Saha, Gerassimos Orkoulas, Samuel Yohannan, Hoi Chun Ho, Ercan Cakmak, Jihua Chen, Soydan Ozcan

Research output: Contribution to journal › Article › peer-review

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Abstract

In this work, nanoporous boron nitride sample was synthesized with a Brunauer-Emmett-Teller (BET) surface area of 1360 m²/g and particle size 5-7 μm. The boron nitride was characterized with X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS), X-ray diffraction (XRD), and electron microscopy (TEM and SEM). Thermogravimetric analysis (TGA) under nitrogen and air and subsequent analysis with XPS and XRD suggested that its structure is stable in air up to 800 °C and in nitrogen up to 1050 °C, which is higher than most of the common adsorbents reported so far. Nitrogen and hydrocarbon adsorption at 298 K and pressure up to 1 bar suggested that all hydrocarbon adsorption amounts were higher than that of nitrogen and the adsorbed amount of hydrocarbon increases with an increase in its molecular weight. The kinetics of adsorption data suggested that adsorption becomes slower with the increase in molecular weight of hydrocarbons. The equilibrium data suggested that that boron nitride is selective to paraffins in a paraffin-olefin mixture and hence may act as an "olefin generator". The ideal adsorbed solution theory (IAST)-based selectivity for CH₄/N₂, C₂H₆/CH₄, and C₃H₈/C₃H₆ was very high and probably higher than the majority of adsorbents reported in the literature. IAST-based calculations were also employed to simulate the binary mixture adsorption data for the gas pairs of CH₄/N₂, C₂H₆/CH₄, C₂H₆/C₂H₄, and C₃H₈/C₃H₆. Finally, a simple mathematical model was employed to simulate the breakthrough behavior of the above-mentioned four gas pairs in a dynamic column experiment. The overall results suggest that nanoporous boron nitride can be used as a potential adsorbent for light hydrocarbon separation.

Original language	English
Pages (from-to)	14506-14517
Number of pages	12
Journal	ACS Applied Materials and Interfaces
Volume	9
Issue number	16
DOIs	https://doi.org/10.1021/acsami.7b01889
State	Published - Apr 26 2017

Funding

This work was partly supported by the American Chemical Society sponsored Petroleum Research Fund (ACS-PRF, Grant Number 54205-UNI10). D.S. also acknowledges the start-up funding and faculty development award from the School of Engineering (SOE), Widener University. TEM (J.C. and H.C.H.) experiments were partially conducted under the user proposal (CNMS2016-302) at the Center for Nanophase Materials Sciences, ORNL, which is a DOE Office of Science User Facility. The authors acknowledge Harry M. Meyer III, ORNL, for his assistance in XPS. D.S. acknowledges Karl A. Nelson, Widener University, for assistance in capturing the SEM image.

Funders	Funder number
Center for Nanophase Materials Sciences
Harry M. Meyer III
Widener University	CNMS2016-302
Office of Science
Oak Ridge National Laboratory
American Chemical Society Petroleum Research Fund	54205-UNI10

Keywords

IAST
adsorption
boron nitride
breakthrough curve
hydrocarbon
selectivity

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10.1021/acsami.7b01889

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title = "Nanoporous Boron Nitride as Exceptionally Thermally Stable Adsorbent: Role in Efficient Separation of Light Hydrocarbons",

abstract = "In this work, nanoporous boron nitride sample was synthesized with a Brunauer-Emmett-Teller (BET) surface area of 1360 m2/g and particle size 5-7 μm. The boron nitride was characterized with X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS), X-ray diffraction (XRD), and electron microscopy (TEM and SEM). Thermogravimetric analysis (TGA) under nitrogen and air and subsequent analysis with XPS and XRD suggested that its structure is stable in air up to 800 °C and in nitrogen up to 1050 °C, which is higher than most of the common adsorbents reported so far. Nitrogen and hydrocarbon adsorption at 298 K and pressure up to 1 bar suggested that all hydrocarbon adsorption amounts were higher than that of nitrogen and the adsorbed amount of hydrocarbon increases with an increase in its molecular weight. The kinetics of adsorption data suggested that adsorption becomes slower with the increase in molecular weight of hydrocarbons. The equilibrium data suggested that that boron nitride is selective to paraffins in a paraffin-olefin mixture and hence may act as an {"}olefin generator{"}. The ideal adsorbed solution theory (IAST)-based selectivity for CH4/N2, C2H6/CH4, and C3H8/C3H6 was very high and probably higher than the majority of adsorbents reported in the literature. IAST-based calculations were also employed to simulate the binary mixture adsorption data for the gas pairs of CH4/N2, C2H6/CH4, C2H6/C2H4, and C3H8/C3H6. Finally, a simple mathematical model was employed to simulate the breakthrough behavior of the above-mentioned four gas pairs in a dynamic column experiment. The overall results suggest that nanoporous boron nitride can be used as a potential adsorbent for light hydrocarbon separation.",

keywords = "IAST, adsorption, boron nitride, breakthrough curve, hydrocarbon, selectivity",

author = "Dipendu Saha and Gerassimos Orkoulas and Samuel Yohannan and Ho, {Hoi Chun} and Ercan Cakmak and Jihua Chen and Soydan Ozcan",

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AU - Saha, Dipendu

AU - Orkoulas, Gerassimos

AU - Yohannan, Samuel

AU - Ho, Hoi Chun

AU - Cakmak, Ercan

AU - Chen, Jihua

AU - Ozcan, Soydan

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AB - In this work, nanoporous boron nitride sample was synthesized with a Brunauer-Emmett-Teller (BET) surface area of 1360 m2/g and particle size 5-7 μm. The boron nitride was characterized with X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS), X-ray diffraction (XRD), and electron microscopy (TEM and SEM). Thermogravimetric analysis (TGA) under nitrogen and air and subsequent analysis with XPS and XRD suggested that its structure is stable in air up to 800 °C and in nitrogen up to 1050 °C, which is higher than most of the common adsorbents reported so far. Nitrogen and hydrocarbon adsorption at 298 K and pressure up to 1 bar suggested that all hydrocarbon adsorption amounts were higher than that of nitrogen and the adsorbed amount of hydrocarbon increases with an increase in its molecular weight. The kinetics of adsorption data suggested that adsorption becomes slower with the increase in molecular weight of hydrocarbons. The equilibrium data suggested that that boron nitride is selective to paraffins in a paraffin-olefin mixture and hence may act as an "olefin generator". The ideal adsorbed solution theory (IAST)-based selectivity for CH4/N2, C2H6/CH4, and C3H8/C3H6 was very high and probably higher than the majority of adsorbents reported in the literature. IAST-based calculations were also employed to simulate the binary mixture adsorption data for the gas pairs of CH4/N2, C2H6/CH4, C2H6/C2H4, and C3H8/C3H6. Finally, a simple mathematical model was employed to simulate the breakthrough behavior of the above-mentioned four gas pairs in a dynamic column experiment. The overall results suggest that nanoporous boron nitride can be used as a potential adsorbent for light hydrocarbon separation.

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KW - breakthrough curve

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KW - selectivity

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Nanoporous Boron Nitride as Exceptionally Thermally Stable Adsorbent: Role in Efficient Separation of Light Hydrocarbons

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Keywords

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