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Title: What Are the Best Materials To Separate a Xenon/Krypton Mixture?

Journal Article · · Chemistry of Materials
 [1];  [2];  [3];  [1];  [4]
  1. Univ. of California, Berkeley, CA (United States). Dept. of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering
  2. Univ. of California, Berkeley, CA (United States). Dept. of Chemistry
  3. Univ. of California, Berkeley, CA (United States). Dept. of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering; Norwegian Univ. of Science and Technology, Trondheim (Norway)
  4. Lawrence Berkeley National Lab. (LBNL), Berkeley, CA (United States). Scientific Computing Group

Accelerating progress in the discovery and deployment of advanced nanoporous materials relies on chemical insight and structure property relationships for rational design. Because of the complexity of this problem, trial-and-error is heavily involved in the laboratory today. A cost-effective route to aid experimental materials discovery is to construct structure models of nanoporous materials in silico and use molecular simulations to rapidly test them and elucidate data-driven guidelines for rational design. For example, highly-tunable nanoporous materials have shown promise as adsorbents for separating an industrially relevant gaseous mixture of xenon and krypton. Here in this work, we characterize, screen, and analyze the Nanoporous Materials Genome, a database of ca. 670,000 porous material structures, for candidate adsorbents for xenon/krypton separations. For over half a million structures, the computational resources required for a brute-force screening using grand-canonical Monte Carlo simulations of Xe/Kr adsorption are prohibitive. To overcome the computational cost, we used a hybrid approach combining machine learning algorithms (random forests) with molecular simulations. We compared the results from our large-scale screening with simple pore models to rationalize the strong link between pore size and selectivity. With this insight, we then analyzed the anatomy of the binding sites of the most selective materials. These binding sites can be constructed from tubes, pockets, rings, or cages and are often composed of non-discrete chemical fragments. The complexity of these binding sites emphasizes the importance of high-throughput computational screenings to discover new materials. Interestingly, our screening study predicts that the two most selective materials in the database are an aluminophosphate zeolite analogue and a calcium based coordination network, both of which have already been synthesized but not yet tested for Xe/Kr separations.

Research Organization:
Univ. of Minnesota, Minneapolis, MN (United States). Nanoporous Materials Genome Center; Energy Frontier Research Centers (EFRC) (United States). Center for Gas Separations Relevant to Clean Energy Technologies (CGS)
Sponsoring Organization:
USDOE Office of Science (SC), Basic Energy Sciences (BES)
Contributing Organization:
National Energy Research Scientific Computing Center
Grant/Contract Number:
FG02-12ER16362; SC0008688
OSTI ID:
1474401
Journal Information:
Chemistry of Materials, Vol. 27, Issue 12; ISSN 0897-4756
Publisher:
American Chemical Society (ACS)Copyright Statement
Country of Publication:
United States
Language:
English
Citation Metrics:
Cited by: 183 works
Citation information provided by
Web of Science

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Cited By (25)

Metal–organic framework derived nanoporous carbons with highly selective adsorption and separation of xenon journal January 2018
In silico discovery of metal-organic frameworks for precombustion CO 2 capture using a genetic algorithm journal October 2016
Efficiently Exploring Adsorption Space to Identify Privileged Adsorbents for Chemical Separations of a Diverse Set of Molecules journal April 2018
Porous organic materials with ultra-small pores and sulfonic functionality for xenon capture with exceptional selectivity journal January 2018
Fast screening of porous materials for noble gas adsorption and separation: a classical density functional approach journal January 2018
Neon-Bearing Ammonium Metal Formates: Formation and Behaviour under Pressure journal September 2016
Cutting the cost of carbon capture: a case for carbon capture and utilization journal January 2016
Hybrid Ultra-Microporous Materials for Selective Xenon Adsorption and Separation journal May 2016
Hybrid Ultra-Microporous Materials for Selective Xenon Adsorption and Separation journal May 2016
A new approach for the prediction of partition functions using machine learning techniques journal July 2018
Predicting defect behavior in B2 intermetallics by merging ab initio modeling and machine learning journal December 2016
A nanosized metal–organic framework with small pores for kinetic xenon separation journal January 2018
A microporous metal–organic framework with commensurate adsorption and highly selective separation of xenon journal January 2018
Metal–organic framework with optimally selective xenon adsorption and separation journal June 2016
Deep neural network learning of complex binary sorption equilibria from molecular simulation data journal January 2019
XRD-DSC: a screening tool for identifying effective MOFs for selective gas sorption from humid gas streams journal February 2019
An In-Situ Neutron Diffraction and DFT Study of Hydrogen Adsorption in a Sodalite-Type Metal-Organic Framework, Cu-BTTri : An journal January 2019
Molecular modelling and machine learning for high-throughput screening of metal-organic frameworks for hydrogen storage journal April 2019
High-throughput computational screening of nanoporous adsorbents for CO 2 capture from natural gas journal January 2016
Distinguishing Metal–Organic Frameworks journal January 2018
High-Throughput Screening Approach for Nanoporous Materials Genome Using Topological Data Analysis: Application to Zeolites journal June 2018
Eigencages: Learning a Latent Space of Porous Cage Molecules journal December 2018
The Influence of Intrinsic Framework Flexibility on Adsorption in Nanoporous Materials journal April 2017
Metal Substitution as the Method of Modifying Electronic Structure of Metal–Organic Frameworks journal March 2019
Excavating hidden adsorption sites in metal-organic frameworks using rational defect engineering journal November 2017

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