raw · papers · ingested 2026-08-10
Crystallization-Assisted Water Adsorption in Amorphous Molecular Adsorbents — and the 2026 Verdict on MOF Hydrothermal Stability (Nature Communications 2026)
confidence: high
Source: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-026-69953-5
Source: Nat. Commun. 17 (2026), open access, full text read. Credibility: High — top-venue peer-reviewed; the durability framing is literature review within a primary paper.
Quotable state-of-field claims (early 2026)
- Most MOFs: moderate-to-poor hydrothermal stability; champions degrade slowly under repeated >100 °C cycling.
- Required cycle counts for deployment: thousands to millions; typical stability demos: tens to hundreds.
- Zeolites: 200–300 °C regeneration, up to 30% open-air capacity loss. Salts: >175 °C full regeneration.
- MIL-160(Al) — a flagship cooling MOF — lost 35–45% uptake in a ~70k-cycle benchmark study (ATE 2023) under some conditions.
Tension to record
The ORNL review shows MOFs winning on COP; this source shows the durability gap unclosed. Both are true — compile as “MOFs win on paper; cycle-life at chiller duty remains the open question” in adsorption-limitations-and-mitigations.