The escalating levels of carbon dioxide as a result of fossil fuels combustion is one of the greatest environmental concerns. Therefore carbon capture and storage technologies will play a vital role beside the use of renewable sources of energy. In the last few years, metal-organic frameworks have emerged as promising materials for CO2 capture on the basis of physisorption. In my master's degree thesis I tried to improve the adsorption capacities of selected materials by modifying already known structures for CO2 capture. On Zn-1,4-benzenecarboxylate postsynthetic cationic exchange with alkali metal cations was performed. I also studied representatives of zeolitic imidazolate frameworks ZIF-4, ZIF-7 and ZIF-8. I performed substitution of zinc cations with lithium cations to make some additional vacancies within the framework, wherein I was increasing the amount of lithium cations according to zinc cations. The characterization of products was performed by X-ray powder difraction, thermogravimetric analysis, N2 physisorption analysis and measurements of CO2 adsorption capacities. Crystals of an appropriate size were characterized by single-crystal XRD. Measurements of N2 adsorption isotherms show that the specific surface area of Zn-1,4-benzenecarboxylate exchanged with potassium cations increases for 22 % relative to the parent material. The same trend is observed for CO2 adsorption. Among zeolitic imidazolate frameworks the largest change in CO2 adsorption capacity is observed for ZIF-7. Modification with the highest proportion of lithium cations according to zinc cations have the largest gain in adsorption, achieving 70 % improvement relative to the parent material. There are no major changes in specific area and CO2 adsorption capacities for ZIF-4 modifications. ZIF-8 modification with the highest amount of lithium cations shows the increasing in specific surface area for 64 % relative to the parent material, however CO2 adsorption capacity increases only for 10 %. The more efficient adsorption is inhibited by the framework hydrophobicity.
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