Metal–organic framework with optimally selective xenon adsorption and separation
- Pacific Northwest National Lab. (PNNL), Richland, WA (United States). Physical and Computational Science Directorate
- Univ. of California, Berkeley, CA (United States). Department of Chemical and Biochemical Engineering
- Stony Brook Univ., NY (United States). Department of Geosciences
- Pacific Northwest National Lab. (PNNL), Richland, WA (United States). Energy and Environmental Directorate
- Stony Brook Univ., NY (United States). Department of Chemistry
- Univ. of California, Berkeley, CA (United States). Department of Chemical and Biochemical Engineering ; Institut des Sciences et Ingenierie Chimiques, Valais, Ecole Polytechnique Federale de Lausanne (EPFL) (Switzerland)
- Stony Brook Univ., NY (United States). Department of Geosciences and Department of Chemistry; Brookhaven National Lab. (BNL), Upton, NY (United States). Photon Sciences
- Lawrence Berkeley National Lab. (LBNL), Berkeley, CA (United States). Computational Research Division; IMDEA Materials Institute, C/Eric Kandel 2, Madrid (Spain)
- Pacific Northwest National Lab. (PNNL), Richland, WA (United States). Physcial and Computational Science Directorate
Nuclear energy is among the most viable alternatives to our current fossil fuel-based energy economy. The mass deployment of nuclear energy as a low-emissions source requires the reprocessing of used nuclear fuel to recover fissile materials and mitigate radioactive waste. A major concern with reprocessing used nuclear fuel is the release of volatile radionuclides such as xenon and krypton that evolve into reprocessing facility off-gas in parts per million concentrations. The existing technology to remove these radioactive noble gases is a costly cryogenic distillation; alternatively, porous materials such as metal-organic frameworks have demonstrated the ability to selectively adsorb xenon and krypton at ambient conditions. Here we carry out a high-throughput computational screening of large databases of metal-organic frameworks and identify SBMOF-1 as the most selective for xenon. We affirm this prediction and report that SBMOF-1 exhibits by far the highest reported xenon adsorption capacity and a remarkable Xe/Kr selectivity under conditions pertinent to nuclear fuel reprocessing.
- Research Organization:
- Energy Frontier Research Centers (EFRC) (United States). Center for Gas Separations Relevant to Clean Energy Technologies (CGS); Brookhaven National Laboratory (BNL), Upton, NY (United States); Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL), Richland, WA (United States); Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (LBNL), Berkeley, CA (United States)
- Sponsoring Organization:
- USDOE Office of Science (SC), Basic Energy Sciences (BES); USDOE Office of Science (SC), Workforce Development for Teachers and Scientists (WDTS); National Science Foundation (NSF)
- Grant/Contract Number:
- SC0012704; SC0001015; AC05-06OR23100; AC02-05CH11231; AC05-76RL01830; DMR-1231586; CHE-0840483
- OSTI ID:
- 1340382
- Alternate ID(s):
- OSTI ID: 1290365; OSTI ID: 1379396
- Report Number(s):
- BNL-112568-2016-JA; PNNL-SA-116761
- Journal Information:
- Nature Communications, Vol. 7; ISSN 2041-1723
- Publisher:
- Nature Publishing GroupCopyright Statement
- Country of Publication:
- United States
- Language:
- English
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