Experimental investigation on indoor air toluene adsorption performance of Fe/Al-based metal organic framework materials

Benefiting from high specific area and adjustable pore structure, metal-organic framework (MOF) materials have shown great potential in air VOCs adsorption. However, their adsorption abilities for VOCs under conce0ntrations of indoor air in civil buildings have not been fully verified. This study focuses on the indoor air toluene adsorption of Fe/Al-based MOFs: aluminum fumarate (Al-Fum), MOF-303(Al) and MIL-100(Fe). The materials were synthesized by hydrothermal method, and characterized by BET, PXRD, FT-IR and SEM. Their toluene adsorption performances were measured by breakthrough methods under the temperature range of 20-40 °C with toluene concentration of 30-70 ppb. The effects of temperature and toluene concentration on the adsorption capacity, breakthrough time, and saturation time are analyzed. Langmuir adsorption isotherm model is used for fitting verification, and Pearson coefficient is used for adsorption correlation analysis. The results show that the adsorption capacity of the three MOFs increases with the rise of toluene concentration and decrease with the increase of temperature. MOF-303(Al) has obvious advantages, followed by Al-Fum, and MIL-100(Fe). It is also found that the adsorption performance of the three MOFs at 25 °C is stronger than traditional adsorbents such as silica gel. This study provides a reference basis for the application of MOFs in indoor air purification.