Micromeritics or Particulate Systems Instrument(s):
- 3Flex
Personal Experience with Micromeritics:
Characterizing the physical and textural properties of porous materials synthesized in our group is a critical part of our research on developing advanced materials and processes for gas separation applications. Ever since the beginning of my career at Missouri S&T (December 2014), having 3Flex in our lab not only has enabled us to precisely characterize the physical and textural properties of our adsorbents and catalysts but also to perform multiple tasks all at once. We make a variety of adsorbents including zeolites, MOFs, ZIFs, supported amines and other hybrid materials. For our adsorbents, it is important to obtain gas isotherms at multiple temperatures. We have obtained isotherms for many gases including CH4, C2H6, C2H4, C3H6, CO2, CO, N2, and H2 at different temperatures ranging from 0 to 100 °C. As a very striking example, our modified ZIF- 7 material exhibited a very high adsorption toward ethane at 298 K and 100 kPa, ca 3.30 mmol/g, as can be seen from Figure below. This is almost 44% higher than previously reported capacities at the same pressure and temperature. In all the years that i had been involved in testing ceramic raw materials all the Instruments mentioned above were very reliable and durable. Micromeritics technical and customer support was and is very helpful to me.
With regard to catalysts materials, our group makes various heterogeneous catalysts such as mixed metal oxides, zeolites, supported metals, and carbon nanotube supported catalysts for a variety of applications such as hydrogenation, deoxygenation, dehydrogenation, and oxygenation reactions at high pressures and temperatures. To be able to perform TPD, TPR and TPO measurements on these catalysts and analyze their physical and chemical structures related to catalytic applications, we had to connect a mass spectrometer (MS) to our 3Flex instrument. Initially, it was very challenging and we could not do that because our MS did not have triggering capability. Finally after a few weeks with the help of Micromeritics engineers, we obtained very nice TPD/TPR/TPO profiles. So far, we have published one paper based on the results obtained from our 3Flex and are currently working on two more manuscripts for submission.
The 3Flex gas analyzer supports our fundamental and applied research on the design and synthesis of novel porous materials for gas separation, purification, catalytic and storage applications. We are hopeful that through this instrument, we can continue performing cutting-edge research in this important field of study in the Midwest region, in particular in the state of Missouri.
