Résumé
The purification of nitrogen-containing gas mixtures, natural/shale gas, and dry air calls for economically viable adsorptive separation processes involving an adsorbent with a higher affinity for N-2 over hydrocarbons and oxygen. This led to the discovery of a new class of unprecedented N-2-selective metal-organic frameworks (MOFs) with coordinatively unsaturated chromium(III) sites, e.g., MIL-100(Cr) (MIL: Materials of Institut Lavoisier). Following this preliminary study, here grand canonical Monte Carlo simulations identified MIL-101(Cr), an analogue of MIL-100(Cr), as another N-2-selective adsorbent from mixtures of both CH4-N-2 (natural gas purification) and O-2-N-2 (air purification). This prediction was further compared to single gas adsorption and breakthrough separation experiments. It was evidenced that only the more energetic coordinatively unsaturated chromium sites released using an activation temperature of 523 K are responsible for the N-2-selective behavior of MIL-101(Cr). The separation mechanisms were then elucidated at the molecular level, and this emphasized the central role played by the concentration of coordinatively unsaturated chromium(III) sites in MIL-101(Cr) that can be controlled by the activation temperature of the sample.