(188n) Kinetics of the Removal of Toxic Chemicals at Engineered Metal Organic Frameworks

There is a high risk of inhalation exposure to a wide variety of toxic industrial chemicals (TICs) which find use in commercial and industrial applications and are shipped widely across the county. These hazardous chemicals necessitate the use of personal protective equipment (PPE) including filter masks. The majority of currently available mask filters rely on the use of carbon-based materials as the primary adsorbent to protect the user. The carbon materials only function as an adsorbent, trapping harmful vapors, but once saturated, the vapor will break through. There is a need for new materials to not only provide enhanced specific adsorption, but where possible act as catalysts for the degradation of the harmful material, extending the wear time as well as proving a pathway to reuse.

A range of metal-organic framework (MOF) materials have shown great promise both as an effective adsorbent and, more importantly, as a rapid and efficient means of catalyzing the detoxification or destruction of the harmful chemicals. They have traditionally been held back by their nanometer- to submicron-scale particle powders, making them impractical to integrate into conventional filter masks. Mainstream has developed and presented the results of our highly scalable and tunable process to produce high porosity-engineered MOF-polymer beads that enables them as direct replacements for carbon in filter cartridges. This platform approach, has been demonstrated as applicable to a wide range of MOF materials, bead size can be controlled down to 0.1 mm with high MOF loading, no loss of active MOF surface area, high stability, low-pressure drop, and no dusting.

We will discuss the use of a range of encapsulated MOFs for key toxic chemicals and simulants, providing insight into the MOF and bead adsorption kinetics, breakthrough behavior, and degradation rate as they are incorporated into a functional device in a range of environments (temperature and humidity). The device performance is dependent on the integration of the beads, impacting overall pressure drop and breathing resistance. Additionally, we will explore how these tuned MOF parameters can enable increased operational time and reuse of filters, advancing the development of PPE and MOF materials.