Large-scale MOF production
BASF SE (Ludwigshafen, Germany; www.basf.com) is said to be the first company to produce metal-organic frameworks (MOFs) on a production scale of several hundred tons per year. A first project has now been successfully completed for Svante Technologies Inc. (Burnaby, B.C., Canada; svante.com). The interdisciplinary BASF team of researchers, scaleup experts and engineers worked collaboratively on the scaleup by converting the Svante laboratory recipe into a safe plant procedure for large-scale production. The MOFs produced will be used as solid sorbents for carbon-capture projects.
MOFs are highly crystalline structures with nanometer-sized pores and a large surface area. This structure offers a high capacity for the storage of CO2, the dehumidification of air for room climate control and the adsorption of the greenhouse gas methane. BASF has developed expertise on the scaleup and production of MOFs, can tailor MOFs to application requirements and specifications, and today has the capacity to produce customized MOFs for various applications and industries.