Abstract
Porous liquids are a promising new class of materials featuring nanoscale cavity units
dispersed in liquids that are suitable for applications such as gas storage and separation. In this
work, we use molecular dynamics simulations to examine the multi-component gas storage in a
porous liquid consisting of crown-ether-substituted cage molecules dissolved in a 15-crown-5
solvent. More specifically, we computed the storage of three prototypical small molecules
including CO2, CH4, and N2, and their binary mixtures in individual cage molecules. For porous
liquids in equilibrium with a binary 1:1 gas mixture bath, a cage molecule shows a high
selectivity of 4.3 and 13.1 for the CO2/CH4 and CO2/N2 pairs, respectively. We provide a
molecular perspective of how gas molecules are stored in the cage molecule and how the storage
of one type of gas molecule is affected by other types of gas molecules. Our results clarify the
molecular mechanisms behind the selectivity of such cage molecules toward different gases.
