Highly effective hydrogen isotope separation by cryogenic gas chromatography in a new stationary phase material MnCl2@CPL-1@γ-Al2O3

In this work, metal-organic framework compound CPL-1 of a formula {[Cu 2 (pzdc) 2 (pyz)]⋅2H 2 O} n (pzdc = pyrazine-2,3-dicarboxylate, pyz = pyrazine) possessing kinetic quantum sieving effect on H 2 /D 2 separation was selected to prepare two new chromatography stationary phase materials CPL-1@γ-Al 2 O 3 and MnCl 2 @CPL-1@γ-Al 2 O 3 by loading CPL-1 on γ-Al 2 O 3 particles with size 80–100 mesh through repeating in situ crystallization process , and afterwards by loading MnCl 2 on CPL-1@γ-Al 2 O 3 via impregnation approach. The two optimized materials were thoroughly characterized by IR, XRD , SEM, EDS and TG/DTA method. The experimental results showed that, under liquid nitrogen temperature by using just 1-m chromatographic column and cheap He gas as carrier gas, the MnCl 2 @CPL-1@γ-Al 2 O 3 can solve the problem of long separation time and trailing phenomenon existing in the CPL-1@γ-Al 2 O 3 column, can realize highly effective hydrogen isotope H 2 /D 2 separation with good separation resolution (R = 1.62) and approximate Gauss distribution of chromatographic peak, can be used for both qualitative and quantitative analysis of hydrogen isotope H 2 /D 2 with short separation time of 6.5 min.