Efficient production of polymer-grade propylene from the propane/propylene binary mixture using Cu-MOF-74 framework
Hassan Abedini, Mehrdad Asgari, Martin Watt Coull, Ahmad Shariati, Mohammad Reza Khosravi‐Nikou
Abstract
We employ the Cu-MOF-74 framework for the separation of a propane/propylene mixed stream. Performing single and binary component breakthrough experiments demonstrates that this framework has a greater capacity and affinity for propylene relative to propane. A system model is implemented in Aspen Adsorption TM and validated against experimental data. Implementation of this model for the case of industrially relevant propane/propylene separations shows that propylene can be efficiently purified into a polymer-grade level quality using the Cu-MOF-74 framework as an adsorbent. Moreover, reviewing key performance indices shows that the Cu-MOF-74 framework is more efficient for propane/propylene separation than the state-of-the-art commercial adsorbent, i.e., zeolite 13X. Using zeolite 13X as the adsorbent, the recovery and productivity for propylene product are 1.00 mol.kg −1 .h −1 and 74.63%, respectively; the corresponding values for Cu-MOF-74 are 2.36 mol.kg −1 .h −1 and 78.68%, respectively. This highlights the importance of applying novel frameworks for challenging industrial separation applications.