Why is this research needed?

It is now clear that industrial decarbonisation will play an essential role in the effort to achieve the goal set by the Paris Agreement to limit global warming to 1.5 °C, and carbon capture and storage will, without doubt, be one of the main vectors in these efforts. Metal-organic frameworks (MOFs) are set to play a potentially large part in this owing to their exceptional CO₂ sorption properties. MOFs with outstanding CO₂ capture performance have been widely reported, but large-scale production at a competitive cost is yet to be achieved.

What is this research investigating?

The main aim of the project is to upscale the water-based synthesis of F4_MIL-140(Ce) 500-fold using commercial reagents and equipment, and investigate and evaluate the potential for the formation of monoliths of the material since shaping of powders is required in large-scale CCS units. The newly discovered Cerium-based MOF, F4_MIL-140(Ce), is ideally suited for industrial CCS since it displays an exceptional CO₂/N₂ selectivity, amongst the highest reported for solid sorbents. The combination of the commercially available starting materials, simplicity of the synthetic procedure, and the favourable CO₂ sorption properties of the material, make F4_MIL-140(Ce) an optimal candidate for large scale CO₂ capture.

What does the research hope to achieve?

There is a strong and strategic interest in materials and technologies for carbon capture, both in the UK and globally. This research aims to efficiently scale-up the preparation of a Ce-based metal-organic framework to take advantage of its impressive CO₂ properties and evaluate a realistic route to integrate the material into large-scale CCS technologies.