Efficient CO₂ Removal for Ultra-Pure CO Production by Two Hybrid Ultramicroporous Materials

Removal of CO₂ from CO gas mixtures is a necessary but challenging step during production of ultra-pure CO as processed from either steam reforming of hydrocarbons or CO₂ reduction. Herein, two hybrid ultramicroporous materials (HUMs), SIFSIX-3-Ni and TIFSIX-2-Cu-i, which are known to exhibit strong affinity for CO₂ , were examined with respect to their performance for this separation. The single-gas CO sorption isotherms of these HUMs were measured for the first time and are indicative of weak affinity for CO and benchmark CO₂ /CO selectivity (>4000 for SIFSIX-3-Ni). This prompted us to conduct dynamic breakthrough experiments and compare performance with other porous materials. Ultra-pure CO (99.99 %) was thereby obtained from CO gas mixtures containing both trace (1 %) and bulk (50 %) levels of CO₂ in a one-step physisorption-based separation process.