Design of HKUST-1 –like structure MOFs for methane and hydrogen storage as fuels in light vehicles

Abstract

The use of light vehicles globally generates high consumption of crude oil and CO₂ emissions, problems that can be overcome by using hydrogen as an energy carrier and methane as fuel. A challenge for their use is related to storage, since under normal conditions of pressure and temperature these gases have low energy densities. Thus, it is required to store large masses of gas in volumes that allow the installation of tanks in light vehicles. The adsorption of gases in porous solids is an alternative for this purpose: thus, in this work porous materials were designed from the chemical modification of a known compound (HKUST-1) that were characterized by argon adsorption at 87 K. The properties obtained were correlated with the adsorbed amount of hydrogen and methane, at 77 and 298 K, respectively. With the proposed chemical modification, it was possible to improve the hydrogen adsorption capacity of HKUST-1.