Publisher: College of Chemistry and Material Science

Date: November 13, 2024

A research team from Jinan University, led by Zeng Heng, Lu Weigang, and Li Dan, has recently made significant strides in chemical engineering, as detailed in their latest publication in the prestigious journal Chem. 

The study centers on the direct production of high-purity o-xylene from a complex mixture of six component BTEXs—benzene, toluene, ethylbenzene, o-xylene, m-xylene, and p-xylene—utilizing an innovative channel-pore interconnected metal-organic framework (MOF) known as JNU-2. Xie Xiaojing, a postdoctoral fellow at the School of Chemistry and Materials Science, is the first author of the paper.

Key highlights of the research include:

- The development of a method for direct production of o-xylene with over 99.5% purity and a 94% recovery rate from BTEX mixtures.

- An unprecedented adsorption selectivity that excludes o-xylene while effectively adsorbing other BTEX components.

- Successful demonstration of o-xylene purification via liquid-phase extraction, achieving significant yields (15.2 mL of o-xylene) over ten cycles.

- The MOF maintained its structural integrity even after prolonged exposure to BTEX conditions for 30 days, underscoring its stability.

This research was supported by numerous funding initiatives, including the National Natural Science Foundation of China and various provincial research programs. With an impact factor of 19.1, Chem stands as a flagship journal of Cell Press, highlighting the importance of this work in the field of chemistry.

For further details, the paper can be accessed [here]

(https://doi.org/10.1016/j.chempr.2024.10.006).