Comparison of the behavior of metal-organic frameworks and zeolites for hydrocarbon separations.

The objective of this work was to study the adsorption and separation of the most important families of hydrocarbon compounds on metal-organic frameworks (MOFs), in comparison with zeolites. For this purpose, we have selected four probe molecules, each of them representing one of these families, i.e.

CsMoO2(HO3P-CH2-PO3): a new metallodiphosphonate with a hybrid framework.

Crystals of caesium molybdenomethylenediphosphonate, [CsMoO(2)(CH(3)O(6)P(2))], were hydrothermally synthesized at 473 K. The monoclinic structure, as determined from single-crystal X-ray diffraction, is two-dimensional and consists of stacked mixed layers of corner-sharing tetrahedral diphosphonate groups and MoO(6) octahedra, between which Cs+ cations are intercalated.