Enhanced Adsorption of Aromatic Volatile Organic Compounds on a Perchloro Covalent Triazine Framework through Multiple Intermolecular Interactions.

Volatile organic compounds (VOCs) may have short- and long-term adverse health effects. Especially, aromatic VOCs including benzene, toluene, ethylbenzene, and xylene (BTEX) are important indoor air pollutants. Developing highly efficient porous adsorbents with broad applicability remains a major challenge. In this paper, a perchlorinated covalent-triazine framework (ClCTF-1-400) is prepared for adsorbing BTEX. The structure of the prepared ClCTF-1-400 is confirmed by using FTIR, XRD, Raman, solid-state C NMR, XPS, SEM and TEM, and the pore distribution is also determined. It is found that ClCTF-1-400 is reversible VOCs absorbent with very high absorption capacities, which can adsorb benzene (693 mg g ), toluene (621 mg g ), ethylbenzene (603 mg g ), o-xylene (500 mg g ), m-xylene (538 mg g ), and p-xylene (592 mg g ) at 25 °C and their saturated vapor pressure (∼ 1 kPa). ClCTF-1-400 is of higher adsorption capacities for all selected VOCs than activated carbon and other reported adsorbents. The adsorption mechanism is also inferred through theoretical calculation and in-site FTIR. The observed excellent BTEX adsorption performance is attributed to the multiple weak interactions between the ClCTF-1-400 frameworks and aromatic molecules through multiple weak interactions (C-H…π and C-Cl…π). The breakthrough experiment demonstrates ClCTF-1-400 has the potential for real VOCs pollutant removal. This article is protected by copyright. All rights reserved.