CO₂ Capture in Dry and Wet Conditions in UTSA-16 Metal–Organic Framework

Water is the strongest competitor to CO2 in the adsorption on microporous materials, affecting their performances as CO2 scrubbers in processes such as postcombustion carbon capture. The metal–organic framework (MOF) UTSA-16 is considered a promising material for its capacity to efficiently capture CO2 in large quantities, thanks to the presence of open metal sites (OMSs). It is here shown that UTSA-16 is also able to desorb fully water already at room temperature. This property is unique from all the other materials with OMSs reported so far. UTSA-16 retains indeed the 70% of its CO2 separation capacity after admittance of water in a test flow, created to simulate the emissions from a real postcombustion carbon-capture process. This important aspect not yet observed for any other amine-free material, associated with a high material stability—tested for 160 cycles—and a small temperature swing necessary for regeneration, places UTSA-16 in the restrict number of systems with a real technological future for CO2 separation.