Public Research Seminar by Sustainable Energy and Environment Thrust, HKUST(GZ) - Porphyrin-Based Metal-Organic Framework as Highly Efficient Adsorbents for Air Pollution Control and Decarbonization

Nitrogen oxides (NOx) are major air pollutants that bring huge damage to the environment and people’s health. The over-combustion of fossil fuels leads to the excessive emission of carbon dioxide (CO2), a typical greenhouse gas, which further poses great threat to global climate change. Gas adsorption by solid adsorbents, which is based on host-guest interactions, is a promising approach for air pollutant control and CO2 capture. Some porous solid adsorbents, such as silica, carbon materials, zeolites, and metal-organic frameworks (MOFs) and their composites, have been attempted at ambient conditions. However, as some air pollutants, such as NO2, are highly reactive, oxidizing, and corrosive, it’s challenging for people to develop the adsorbents simultaneously showing high gas adsorption capacity, satisfactory selectivity, and good regenerability in real cases. In this talk, we will introduce a series of highly functional and stable porphyrin-based metal-organic frameworks (PMOFs) as ambient air pollutants and CO2 adsorbents. Using the biomimetic design concept, we tuned some gas capture ability by changing the type of metal node (Al or Zr) and atom-isolated transition metals (TMs) in the porphyrin ring under the construction of multivariate PMOFs. The in-situ adsorption characterizations help us investigate the possible interactions between hosts and guests, and also disclose the adsorption mechanisms. This work may provide new perspectives for the development of adsorption-based technology for mitigating ambient air pollutants and greenhouse gas emissions.