Mechanical characterisation of polymer of intrinsic microporosity PIM-1 for hydrogen storage applications

Polymers of intrinsic microporosity (PIMs) are currently attracting interest due to their unusual combination of high surface areas and capability to be processed into free-standing films. However, there has been little published work with regards to their physical and mechanical properties. In this paper, detailed characterisation of PIM-1 was performed by considering its chemical, gas adsorption and mechanical properties. The polymer was cast into films, and characterised in terms of their hydrogen adsorption at −196 °C up to much higher pressures (17 MPa) than previously reported (2 MPa), demonstrating the maximum excess adsorbed capacity of the material and its uptake behaviour in higher pressure regimes. The measured tensile strength of the polymer film was 31 MPa with a Young’s modulus of 1.26 GPa, whereas the average storage modulus exceeded 960 MPa. The failure strain of the material was 4.4%. It was found that the film is thermally stable at low temperatures, down to −150 °C, and decomposition of the material occurs at 350 °C. These results suggest that PIM-1 has sufficient elasticity to withstand the elastic deformations occurring within state-of-the-art high-pressure hydrogen storage tanks and sufficient thermal stability to be applied at the range of temperatures necessary for gas storage applications

Isosteric heat of hydrogen adsorption on MOFs: comparison between adsorption calorimetry, sorption isosteric method, and analytical models

Isosteric heat of adsorption is an important parameter required to describe the thermal performance of adsorptive storage systems. It is most frequently calculated from adsorption isotherms measured over wide ranges of pressure and temperature, using the so-called adsorption isosteric method. Direct quantitative estimation of isosteric heats on the other hand is possible using the coupled calorimetric-volumetric method, which involves simultaneous measurement of heat and adsorption. In this work, we compare the isosteric heats of hydrogen adsorption on microporous materials measured by both methods. Furthermore, the experimental data are compared with the isosteric heats obtained using the modified Dubinin-Astakhov, Tth, and Unilan adsorption analytical models to establish the reliability and limitations of simpler methods and assumptions. To this end, we measure the hydrogen isosteric heats on five prototypical metal-organic frameworks: MOF-5, Cu-BTC, Fe-BTC, MIL-53, and MOF-177 using both experimental methods. For all MOFs, we find a very good agreement between the isosteric heats measured using the calorimetric and isosteric methods throughout the range of loading studied. Models' prediction on the other hand deviates from both experiments depending on the MOF studied and the range of loading. Under low-loadings of less than 5 mol kg(-1), the isosteric heat of hydrogen adsorption decreases in the order Cu-BTC > MIL-53 > MOF-5 > Fe-BTC > MOF-177. The order of isosteric heats is coherent with the strength of hydrogen interaction revealed from previous thermal desorption spectroscopy measurements