A triptycene derived hypercrosslinked polymer for gas capture and separation applications

Abstract

AbstractThis work describes facile synthesis of a porous polymeric material (T‐HCP) using readily available reagents. Specifically, T‐HCP is a thermally stable and hypercrosslinked polymer (HCP) that is essentially microporous with a high BET specific surface area (940 m2 g−1). Triptycene based polymers are known to feature internal free volume. Thus, the incorporation of triptycene units and extensive crosslinking by an external cross‐linker in T‐HCP makes it a promising adsorbent for small gas capture applications. Experimental results show that T‐HCP demonstrated good CO2 capture capacity of 132 mg g−1 (273 K, 1 bar). Molecular hydrogen storage capacity of T‐HCP is estimated to be 17.7 mg g−1 (77 K, 1 bar). T‐HCP revealed high CO2/N2 selectivity (up to 63) as well as promising CO2/CH4 (up to 9.1) selectivity suggesting its potential applicability for CO2 separation from flue and natural gases.