Posted by Ben Proudlove on Tue, Jun 29, 2010 @ 10:49 AM
New research carried out by the Kitagawa group has resulted in the development of a new porous coordination polymer that is essentially triggered (in terms of its adsorption behaviour) as temperature increases - opposite to the behaviour of most porous materials. Further work has shown that oxygen is adsorbed more as temperature increases, whereas little adsorption of argon takes place so potentially this material could be used for separation of argon and oxygen (normally difficult due to similarities of these molecules).
Further details on this work can be seen here where they used BEL volumetric and Rubotherm gravimetric systems in combination with other techniques for characterising the material.
Posted by Ben Proudlove on Tue, Dec 01, 2009 @ 12:17 PM
Further to their interview with Professor Kitagawa's group Science Watch have followed this up with an interesting Q&A session with Professor Kimoon Kim discussing the work at POSTECH in Korea looking at rigid and flexible MOFs for such applications as hydrogen or CO2 storage.
Metal Organic Frameworks (also known as Porous Coordination Polymers) can be designed and synthesised to meet many application demands and current research is pushing the boundaries in terms of being able to meet the hydrogen storage capacity requirements set by the US guidelines as well as being useful for the capture of CO2...
Posted by Ben Proudlove on Fri, Nov 20, 2009 @ 06:59 AM
Really interesting interview with Professor Omar Yaghi on the Yaghi Laboratory Website.
Professor Yaghi is one of the leaders in the field of Metal Organic Frameworks (MOFs) and here he discusses their use for CO2 capture. The specific MOF he mentions 1g of the material has a surface area the size of 60-70 tennis courts! And this porous framework can be "designed" to selectively allow sorption of CO2 rather than other gases.
You may also be interested in having a look at our MOF research instrumentation page.
Posted by Ben Proudlove on Wed, Nov 11, 2009 @ 12:49 PM
Interesting paper recently published through the Journal of the American Chemical Society detailing work from the Kitagawa Group at Kyoto University and their research into porous coordination polymers.
Professor Kitagawa is well known to us as he's a good customer of Rubotherm and BEL both of which we represent exclusively in the UK and Ireland. I met him at the recent BZA (British Zeolite Conference) up in Ambleside where he presented on his work looking into Porous Coordination Polymers (PCPs) or Metal Organic Frameworks (MOFs). They've recently been looking into frameworks that respond to a guest, in other words materials that can be unlocked/triggered by a guest molecule to facilitate a change in their structure changing the PCPs sorption profiles. So in simple terms materials that can be triggered to become more porous.
A brief question and answer section with Professor Kitagawa and his colleague on this subject can also be seen on ScienceWatch.com and further details seen on their group website
Posted by Ben Proudlove on Fri, Sep 11, 2009 @ 12:26 PM
Just like to take this opportunity to announce the launch of a new system we, Merrow Scientific, are now supplying in the UK from our Japanese partner BEL. The BELCryo allows users to carry out research into adsorption at extremely low temperatures. 
The BELCryo has a wide temperature range, allowing measurements to be carried out between 50K and 473K (so about -220degC to 200degC) and with a tight control on the temperature (accuracy of about +/-2mk at 77K)
The BELCryo system can be used in conjunction with a Belsorp Mini II, Max or HP to allow measurements of gas sorption to be carried out at any temperature between 50K and 473K, so such research applications as gas storage into MOF materials.
Coolant (such as liquid nitrogen) isn’t required so there are no issues regarding monitoring of coolant levels and related time restrictions.
For further details and pricing etc please give us a call or email us at info@merrowscientific.com full contact details can be seen here at our Merrow Scientific contact us page