Influence of Functional Groups and Modi cation Sites of Metal-Organic Frameworks on CO2/CH4 Separation: A Monte Carlo Simulation Study

In order to explore the in uence of modification sites of functional groups on landfill gas (CO₂/CH₄) separation performance of metal-organic frameworks (MOFs), six types of organic linkers and three types of functional groups (i.e. -F, -NH₂, -CH₃) were used to construct 36 MOFs of pcu topology based on copper paddlewheel. Grand canonical Monte Carlo simulations were performed in this work to evaluate the separation performance of MOFs at low (vacuum swing adsorption) and high (pressure swing adsorption) pressures, respectively. Simulation results demonstrated that CO₂ working capacity of the unfunctionalized MOFs generally exhibits pore-size dependence at 1 bar, which increases with the decrease in pore sizes. It was also found that -NH₂ functionalized MOFs exhibit the highest CO₂ uptake due to the enhanced Coulombic interactions between the polar -NH₂ groups and the quadrupole moment of CO₂ molecules, which is followed by -CH₃ and -F functionalized ones. Moreover, positioning the functional groups -NH₂ and -CH₃ at sites far from the metal node (site b) exhibits more significant enhancement on CO₂/CH₄ separation performance compared to that adjacent to the metal node (site a).