High efficiency of toluene Ad-/Desorption on Thermal-conductive HKUST-1@BN nanosheets composite

Improving the adsorption capacity of the volatile organic compounds (VOCs) will inevitably decrease the desorption efficiency and hence increase more energy-consumption, which has become a crucial challenging problem for MOFs modification and composition toward VOCs adsorption. Herein, a thermal-conductive composition strategy was proposed to anchor BN nanosheets (BNNS) into HKUST-1 crystals via “N/O-Cu-O” interface. The formed HKUST-1@BNNS composite maintained high surface area (1633.7 m 2 /g having more microporous) and enhanced heat diffusivity (1.8 times of HKUST-1), simultaneously. This enabled significant increase of toluene adsorption capacity on HKUST-1@BNNS up to 4.3 mmol/g (2.8 times of HKUST-1) at ultra-low pressure ( P / P 0 ≈ 0.001) and higher desorption rate of toluene ( k ds  = 29.3 × 10 −2 , 4.0 times of HKUST-1) with lower desorption activation energy ( E d  = 33.5 kJ/mol). Compared with many other state-of-the-art adsorbents (e.g., MOFs, zeolites and activated carbons), it has a much higher adsorption capacity and regeneration rate. Thus, thermal-conductive MOFs construction can be deemed as smart strategy to enhance adsorption efficiency and save desorption energy for VOCs capture.