Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Texas at Austin, 2000. / Vita. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 141-150). Available also in a digital version from Dissertation Abstracts.

Metal-organic framework (MOF) materials are a novel set of porous crystalline materials that have generated great scientific interest within the past two decades due to their attractive properties such as high porosity, surface areas and tunable pore structure. These properties have made them emerge as potential candidates suitable for a broad range of applications such as gas separations and storage, catalysis and drug delivery. Despite their fascinating properties, MOFs are often unsuitable for most industrial applications due to their instability when exposed to mechanical stress. The challenge therefore is to convert the MOFs to high strength materials capable of withstanding such stress while still maintaining their exciting properties. This thesis thus focuses on investigating the effects of different binders on a zirconium based metal-organic-framework, UiO-66, in an attempt to enhance the mechanical strength of the adsorbent samples. Three different binders, kaolinite, polyvinyl alcohol and tartaric acid, are mixed with the parent MOF material in different weight percents, pressed into solid disc pellets at different pressures and calcined at different temperatures. Properties such as changes in structure, density, porosity, surface area, radial crush strength, and the adsorption capacity with CO2 are measured and evaluated. Results gathered from this work reveal that polyvinyl alcohol is the most promising of the three binders due to the increase in the strength of pellets and the slight decrease in CO2 adsorption it offers. Recommendations for future research work aimed at driving these materials towards reaching their maximum application potentials are proposed.

Intermolecular potential energy functions for CO2 have been developed from first principles for use in heterogeneous systems, including one with explicit polarization. The intermolecular potentials have been expressed in a transferable form and parameterized from nearly exact electronic structure calculations. Models with and without explicit many-body polarization effects, known to be important in simulation of interfacial processes, are constructed. The models have been validated on pressure-density isotherms of bulk CO2 and adsorption in three metal-organic framework (MOF) materials. The present models appear to offer advantages over high quality fluid/liquid state potentials in describing CO2 interactions in interfacial environments where sorbates adopt orientations not commonly explored in bulk fluids. Thus, the nonpolar CO2-PHAST and polarizable CO2-PHAST* potentials are recommended for materials/interfacial simulations.

Metal-organic frameworks (MOFs), a new class of porous solids comprised of metal-containing nodes linked by organic ligands, have become promising materials for gas separations. In particular, their flexible chemistry makes them attractive for CO2 capture from flue gas streams in post-combustion plants. Although numerous efforts have been exerted on the investigation of MOFs for CO2 capture, the exploration of the effects from coexisting components present in very dilute proportions in flue gases is limited because of the experimental difficulty to determine the coadsorption of CO2 with trace components. In this regard, molecular simulations show superiority. In this study, molecular simulations are used to estimate the influence of impurities: water, O2, and SO2 on post-combustion CO2 capture in MOFs. Firstly, two MOFs with coordinatively unsaturated metal sites (CUMs), HKUST-1 and Mg-MOF-74 are explored. Increase of CO2 adsorption is observed for hydrated HKUST-1; on the contrary, the opposite water adsorption behavior is observed in hydrated Mg-MOF-74, leading to decrease of CO2 adsorption. Further, water effects on CO2 capture in M-HKUST1 (M = Mg, Zn, Co, Ni) are evaluated to test whether comparing the binding energy could be a general method to evaluate water effects in MOFs with CUMs. It is found that the method works well for Zn-, Co-, and Ni-HKUST1 but partially for Mg-HKUST1. In addition, the effects of O2 and SO2 on CO2 capture in MOFs are also investigated for the first time, showing that the effects of O2 may be negligible but SO2 has negative effects in the CO2 capture process in HKUST-1 systems. Secondly, the influences of water on CO2 capture in three UiO-66 MOFs with functional groups, –NH2, –OH and –Br are explored, respectively. For UiO-66-NH2 and -OH, the presence of water lowers CO2 adsorption significantly; in contrast, water shows much smaller effects in UiO-66-Br. Moreover, the presence of SO2 decreases water adsorption but enhances CO2 uptakes slightly in both UiO-66-NH2 and -Br. Finally, the effects of impurities on CO2 capture in a MOF with suitable pore size (PCN-200) are analyzed. The adsorption of both CO2 and N2 decrease substantially even with 1% water present in the mixture. In addition, the presence of low SO2 does not show obvious effect in PCN-200. However, a lower CO2 adsorption is observed for a mixture with a high SO2 content. In collaboration with experimental groups, the performances of three new MOFs in CO2 capture are evaluated using molecular simulations. The computational results demonstrate the feasibility of precisely designing single-molecule traps (SMT) for CO2 capture. Also, a multi-functional MOF with micro-porosity, open Cu2+ sites and amine groups has also proved computationally the selective adsorption of CO2 over CH4 and N2. Last, we demonstrate that charge separation is an effective strategy for improving CO2 capture in MOFs.

Thesis (M.S.)--Ohio University, November, 2001. / Title from PDF t.p.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Texas at Austin, 2000. / Vita. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 156-165). Available also in a digital version from Dissertation Abstracts.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Texas at Austin, 1999. / Vita. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 129-137). Available also in a digital version from Dissertation Abstracts.

Thesis (Ph.D.)--Ohio University, March, 2003. / Title from PDF t.p. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 147-151)

The present thesis proposes to explore the potential of Zeolitic Imidazolate Framework ZIFs for CO2 capture applications in the conditions required by the Pressure Swing Adsorption separations process. Molecular modelling methods, combining Monte Carlo, Density Functional Theory and ab-initio simulations, were employed to mimic pure and mixture gas adsorption in ZIF materials. A transferable Force Field specifically developed for ZIFs materials is used to characterize a large variety of frameworks. Theses studies enable us to better understand the phenomena acting during adsorption process. Thereby several innovative modifications are proposed to enhance the ZIFs properties for CO2 capture and a series of hypothetical ZIFs are designed, characterized and compared to existing materials. The results cumulated during this thesis were then summarized to propose a first correlative model able to predict ZIF properties from a set of solids descriptors. This study enables to guide the structure design to optimize the ZIF properties.

abstract: Metal Organic Frameworks(MOFs) have been used in various applications, including sensors. The unique crystalline structure of MOFs in addition to controllability of their pore size and their intake selectivity makes them a promising method of detection. Detection of metal ions in water using a binary mixture of luminescent MOFs has been reported. 3 MOFs(ZrPDA, UiO-66 and UiO-66-NH2) as detectors and 4 metal ions(Pb2+, Ni2+, Ba2+ and Cu2+) as the target species were chosen based on cost, water stability, application and end goals. It is possible to detect metal ions such as Pb2+ at concentrations at low as 0.005 molar using MOFs. Also, based on the luminescence responses, a method of distinguishing between similar metal ions has been proposed. It is shown that using a mixture of MOFs with dierent reaction to metal ions can lead to unique and specic 3D luminescence maps, which can be used to identify the present metal ions in water and their amount. In addition to the response of a single MOF to addition of a single metal ion, luminescence response of ZrPDA + UiO-66 mixture to increasing concentration of each of 4 metal ions was studied, and summarized. A new peak is observed in the mixture, that did not exist before, and it is proposed that this peak requires metal ions to activate / Dissertation/Thesis / Masters Thesis Materials Science and Engineering 2018