“Through the review, we identified some IPMs with impressive performance,” said Gengwu Zhang, a postdoc in Khashab’s team. In a statement, he said IPMs could save 70 to 90 per cent of the energy costs of existing technologies used by chemical and petrochemical industries.
According to KAUST, a key advantage of IPMs over many other porous materials is their stability and ability to maintain their porous properties in the solid, liquid, gas or solution states. They can also be readily processed and modified when in solution, unlike many alternatives.
“They can be easily prepared on a large scale by using cheap starting materials,” said Zhang, “Some of them are even commercially available products.”