Abstract
Acetylene, an important petrochemical raw material, is very difficult to store safely under compression because of its highly explosive nature. Here we present a porous metal-organic framework named FJI-H8, with both suitable pore space and rich open metal sites, for efficient storage of acetylene under ambient conditions. Compared with existing reports, FJI-H8 shows a record-high gravimetric acetylene uptake of 224 cm(3) (STP) g(-1) and the second-highest volumetric uptake of 196 cm(3) (STP) cm(-3) at 295 K and 1 atm. Increasing the storage temperature to 308 K has only a small effect on its acetylene storage capacity (∼200 cm(3) (STP) g(-1)). Furthermore, FJI-H8 exhibits an excellent repeatability with only 3.8% loss of its acetylene storage capacity after five cycles of adsorption-desorption tests. Grand canonical Monte Carlo simulation reveals that not only open metal sites but also the suitable pore space and geometry play key roles in its remarkable acetylene uptake.