How Important Is the Internal Hydrophobicity of Metal-Organic Frameworks for the Separation of Water/Alcohol Mixtures?

Short-chain alcohols obtained by fermentation will play a key role in the industrial transformation toward green chemistry because of their use as fuel additives and fuels or for their conversion into olefins. The fermentation broth is often a highly diluted aqueous solution that requires separation, for instance, by liquid phase adsorption in nanoporous materials. However, entropy effects that prefer the adsorption of water might significantly reduce the separation efficiency─even in nanoporous materials with internal hydrophobicity.