Langmuir, Vol.27, No.15, 9083-9087, 2011
Liquid Phase Separation of Polyaromatics on [Cu-2(BDC)(2)(dabco)]
The porous coordination polymer (PCP) [Cu-2(BDC)(2)(dabco)] is capable of selectively adsorbing up to 25 wt % of either 1-methylnaphthalene or 2-methylnaphthalene. Uptakes of unsubstituted naphthalene and 1,4-dimethyl-naphthalene are significantly lower (7-13 wt %), suggesting that monomethyl substituted polyaromatics can be separated from the other fractions. Furthermore, this PCP can perform the difficult separation of 1-methylnaphthalene from 2-methylnaphthalene with separation factors as high as 2.6, proving that specific interactions of the methyl group with the lattice play an important role in determining the adsorption selectivity.