Evaluation of Design of Experiments to Develop MOF-5 Adsorbent for Acetylene Capture

A design of experiments was evaluated in optimizing MOF-5 synthesis for acetylene adsorption. At first, mixture design was used to optimize precursor concentration, terephthalic acid, zinc acetate dihydrate and N,N-dimethylformamide. More specifically, 13 conditions with various molar ratios were designed by extreme vertices design method. After preparing the samples, XRD, N₂ physisorption and SEM analysis were performed for their characterization. Moreover, acetylene adsorption experiments were carried out over the samples under identical conditions. The optimal precursor composition for MOF-5 synthesis was predicted on a molar basis as follows: terephthalic acid: acetate dihydrate: dimethylformamide = 0.1: 0.4: 0.5. Thereafter, multi-level factorial design was designated to investigate the effect of synthesis reaction conditions such as temperature, time and stirring speed. By the statistical analysis of 18 samples designed, 4 reaction parameters were determined for additional adsorption experiments. Therefore, MOF-5 prepared under the synthesis time and temperature of 100 ℃ and 12 h, respectively, showed the maximum adsorption capacity of 15.1 mmol/g.