Identifying appropriate materials that can simultaneously ensure low production costs, scalability, and retention of intrinsic adsorption capabilities throughout the structuring process remains a significant challenge, thereby limiting the industrial implementation of adsorptive gas separation techniques. We report the first example of the structured fiber sorbents incorporating CuI-exchanged Y zeolites (CuI@Y), which can form CuI-alkyne π-complexes for the selective adsorption of acetylene from C2H2/CO2 mixtures. CuI@Y/PVDF fiber sorbents exhibited remarkable adsorption performance, including high C2H2 uptake at low partial pressure (0. 775 mmol·g-1 at 10 mbar C2H2) and high IAST selectivity (11. 7), even after the structuring process. The separation performance was also confirmed by the dynamic breakthrough experiments at 25 °C, demonstrating a separation factor of approximately 3. 12 for a ternary C2H2/CO2/He (10/5/85, v/v/v) mixture along with excellent cyclic stability over multiple separation cycles. Notably, CuI@Y/PVDF fiber sorbents can be readily fabricated and scaled up using commercially available raw materials, with an estimated production cost of 26 per kilogram. In situ diffuse reflectance infrared Fourier transform spectroscopy (DRIFTS) analyses further supported the presence of CuI-alkyne interactions, revealing distinct binding affinities for C2H2 and CO2.
Lee et al. (Fri,) studied this question.