Nitrogen removal from natural gas using solid boron: A first-principles computational study

Authors

Qiao Sun, University Of Queensland
Meng Wang, China University of Petroleum
Zhen Li, University of WollongongFollow
Ping Li, East China University of Science and Technology
Weihua Wang, Qufu Normal University
Xiaojun Tan, University of Jinan
Aijun Du, University Of Queensland

RIS ID

79930

Publication Details

Sun, Q., Wang, M., Li, Z., Li, P., Wang, W., Tan, X. & Du, A. (2013). Nitrogen removal from natural gas using solid boron: A first-principles computational study. Fuel, 109 (2013), 575-581.

Abstract

Selective separation of nitrogen (N2) from methane (CH4) is highly significant in natural gas purification, and it is very challenging to achieve this because of their nearly identical size (the molecular diameters of N2 and CH4 are 3.64 Å and 3.80 Å, respectively). Here we theoretically study the adsorption of N2 and CH4 on B12 cluster and solid boron surfaces a-B12 and c-B28. Our results show that these electron-deficiency boron materials have higher selectivity in adsorbing and capturing N2 than CH4, which provides very useful information for experimentally exploiting boron materials for natural gas purification.