Abstract
A method to efficiently formulate metal-organic frameworks (MOFs) is provided. Our approach follows basic rules of extrusion where the elements of extrusion are the MOF (UTSA-16 powder), the binder (poly-vinyl alcohol, PVA) and the plasticizer (water and propanol). The extrudates produced with this method only lose a small fraction of specific surface area (SSA), in some cases only proportional to the amount of binder used for the formulation. In addition, we observe that the quality of the extrudates is strongly dependent on the activation temperature used for the MOF precursor: a higher activation temperature (393 K) gives less reduction in SSA with the content of binder. For binder contents up to 2 wt% no significant reduction in SSA is observed, while 3 wt% PVA gives only a modest 5% reduction. Moreover, the strength and particle density of the extruded material increase steadily with binder content. The density of the extruded MOF is comparable to a commercial zeolite extrudates with only 2 wt% of binder.