Adsorption breakthrough behavior of 1-butanol from an ABE model solution with high-silica zeolite: Comparison with zeolitic imidazolate frameworks (ZIF-8)

Abstract Adsorption breakthrough behavior of 1-butanol was studied on the hydrophobic materials ZSM-5, ZSM-12, and Beta zeolites and compared with the zeolitic imidazolate framework ZIF-8 from an ABE (acetone-1-butnaol-ethanol) model solution. Adsorption equilibrium and adsorption kinetics were analyzed in single-component systems. Our results showed that the equilibrium adsorption amounts for ZIF-8 were much higher than that of the zeolites but zeolites equilibrium time are shorter (10 min) than that of ZIF-8 (60 min). These phenomena were the result of kinetics effects and flexibility in the ZIF-8. We also evaluated the breakthrough characteristics of the fixed-bed in ABE ternary-component systems, and found that the adsorptive separation mechanism of zeolites was the thermodynamic effect, and that of ZIF-8 was a combination of thermodynamic and kinetic effects. We show that zeolite, especially Beta, is a very attractive material because it exhibits shorter equilibrium time for 1-butanol and better separation breakthrough performance for an ABE model solution and more suitable industrial application.