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A series of N-doped porous carbons with different textural properties and N contents was prepared from a mixture of algae and glucose and their capability for the separation of CO 2 /CH 4 , C 2 H 6 /CH 4 , and CO 2 /H 2 binary mixtures under different conditions (bulk pressure, mixture composition, and temperature) were subsequently assessed in great detail. It was observed that the gas (C 2 H 6 , CO 2 , CH 4 , and H 2 ) adsorption capacity at different pressure regions was primarily governed by different adsorbent parameters (N level, narrow micropore volume, and BET specific surface area). More interestingly, it was found that N-doping can selectively enhance the heats of adsorption of C 2 H 6 and CO 2 , while it had a negligible effect on those of CH 4 and H 2 . The adsorption equilibrium selectivities for separating C 2 H 6 /CH 4 , CO 2 /CH 4 , and CO 2 /H 2 gas mixture pairs on the porous carbons were predicted using the ideal adsorbed solution theory (IAST) based on pure-component adsorption isotherms. In particular, sample NAHA-1 exhibited by far the best performance (in terms of gas adsorption capacity and selectivity) reported for porous carbons for the separation of these three binary mixtures. More significantly, NAHA-1 carbon outperforms many of its counterparts ( e.g. MOFs and zeolites), emphasizing the important role of carbonaceous adsorbents in gas purification and separation.
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This content will become publicly available on January 14, 2026
Modeling ethanol/water adsorption in all-silica zeolites using the real adsorbed solution theory
A comprehensive set of single-component and binary isotherms were collected for ethanol/water adsorption into the siliceous forms of 185 known zeolites using grand-canonical Monte Carlo simulations. Using these data, a systematic analysis of ideal/real adsorbed-solution theory (IAST/RAST) was conducted and activity coefficients were derived for ethanol/water mixtures adsorbed in different zeolites based on RAST. It was found that activity coefficients of ethanol are close to unity while activity coefficients of water are larger in most zeolites, indicating a positive excess free energy of the mixture. This observation can be attributed to water/ethanol interactions being less favorable than water/water interactions in the single-component adsorption of water at comparable loadings. The deviation from ideal behavior can be highly structure-dependent but no clear correlation with pore diameters was identified. Our analysis also demonstrates the following: (1) accurate unary isotherms in the low-loading regime are critical for obtaining physically sensible activity coefficients; (2) the global regression scheme to solve for activity model parameters performs better than fitting activity models to activity coefficients calculated locally at each binary state point; and (3) including the dependence on adsorption potential offers only a minor benefit for describing binary adsorption at the lowest fugacities. Finally, the Margules activity model was found incapable of capturing the non-ideal adsorption behavior over the entire range of fugacities and compositions in all zeolites, but for conditions typical of solution-phase adsorption, RAST predictions using zeolite-specific or even bulk Margules parameters provide an improved description compared to IAST.
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- Award ID(s):
- 2144360
- PAR ID:
- 10638746
- Publisher / Repository:
- AIP Publishing
- Date Published:
- Journal Name:
- The Journal of Chemical Physics
- Volume:
- 162
- Issue:
- 2
- ISSN:
- 0021-9606
- Format(s):
- Medium: X
- Sponsoring Org:
- National Science Foundation
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