High-pressure methane storage and selective gas adsorption in a cyclohexane-functionalised porous organic cage

Porous organic cages are a class of adsorbents that have shown promise for a variety of applications. The octahedral cyclohexane-functionalised imine-based cage, commonly referred to as CC3, is perhaps most recognisable in this regard. However, most gas adsorption studies concerning this cage have focused on chromatographic or noble gas separations. Here, we examine this cage for the adsorptive separation of a wide variety of small molecules, including acetylene, ethylene, ethane, methane, and others. The internal surface of the cage is an optimal binding environment for gaseous substrates and as such the material displays adsorption enthalpies of −15 to −35 kJ/mol, depending on adsorbate. These values are particularly high for an adsorbent lacking coordinatively unsaturated metal sites and are likely a result of optimal cage geometry, which can be inferred from its isostructural nature to one of the pores in a well-known metal-organic framework, HKUST-1. Given this and the soluble nature of this cage, we additionally report optimisation of the high-pressure methane storage properties of this cage by tuning its density.