MOF-Based Adsorbents for Atmospheric Emission Control: A Review

Abstract

This review focuses on the use of metal–organic frameworks (MOFs) for adsorbing gas species that are known to weaken the thermal self-regulation capacities of Earth’s atmosphere. A large section is dedicated to the adsorption of carbon dioxide, while another section is dedicated to the adsorption of other different gas typologies, whose emissions, for various reasons, represent a “wound” for Earth’s atmosphere. High emphasis is given to MOFs that have moved enough ahead in their development process to be currently considered as potentially usable in “real-world” (i.e., out-of-lab) adsorption processes. As a result, there is strong evidence of a wide gap between laboratory results and the industrial implementation of MOF-based adsorbents. Indeed, when a MOF that performs well in a specific process is commercially available in large quantities, economic observations still make designers tend toward more traditional adsorbents. Moreover, there are cases in which a specific MOF remarkably outperforms the currently employed adsorbents, but it is not industrially produced, thus strongly limiting its possibilities in large-scale use. To overcome such limitations, it is hoped that the chemical industry will be able to provide more and more mass-produced MOFs at increasingly competitive costs in the future.