2004 -03 -10
10 :15 at ML J 21

Using Molecular-Level Simulations to Investigate the Structure and Transport Properties of Fluids Adsorbed in Nanoporous Materials

David Keffer

Department of Chemical Engineering, University of Tennessee, Knoxville, USA

Nanoporous materials form a class of adsorbents that contain a porous network in which the dimension of an individual pore is characterized by a length scale on the order of a nanometer. These materials are used in a wide variety of catalytic and separation applications because of the tremendous area of the interior pore surface and the unique properties engendered by the nanoscopic scale of the pore.

When fluids adsorb into these pores, their adsorptive, diffusive, and phase-equilibrium behavior is unlike behavior in the bulk phase. For example, Langmuir isotherms cannot be used to describe adsorption, because the interior pore space is energetically heterogeneous. Knudsen diffusion doesn't describe motion within the pore