Time-dependent CO ₂ sorption hysteresis in a one-dimensional microporous octahedral molecular sieve

The development of sorbents for next-generation CO ₂ mitigation technologies will require better understanding of CO ₂/sorbent interactions. Among the sorbents under consideration are shape-selective microporous molecular sieves with hierarchical pore morphologies of reduced dimensionality. We have characterized the non-equilibrium CO ₂ sorption of OMS-2, a well-known one-dimensional microporous octahedral molecular sieve with manganese oxide framework. Remarkably, we find that the degree of CO ₂ sorption hysteresis increases when the gas/sorbent system is allowed to equilibrate for longer times at each pressure step. Density functional theory calculations indicate a "gate-keeping" role of the cation in the tunnel, only allowing CO ₂ molecules to enter fully into the tunnel via a highly unstable transient state when CO ₂ loadings exceed 0.75 mmol/g. The energy barrier associated with the gate-keeping effect suggests an adsorption mechanism in which kinetic trapping of CO ₂ is responsible for the observed hysteretic behavior.