Accurate Evaluation of the Dispersion Energy in the Simulation of Gas Adsorption into Porous Zeolites

The force fields used to simulate the gas adsorption in porous materials are strongly dominated by the van der Waals (vdW) terms. Here we discuss the delicate problem to estimate these terms accurately, analyzing the effect of different models. To this end, we simulated the physisorption of CH₄, CO₂, and Ar into various Al-free microporous zeolites (ITQ-29, SSZ-13, and silicalite-1), comparing the theoretical results with accurate experimental isotherms. The vdW terms in the force fields were parametrized against the free gas densities and high-level quantum mechanical (QM) calculations, comparing different methods to evaluate the dispersion energies. In particular, MP2 and DFT with semiempirical corrections, with suitable basis sets, were chosen to approximate the best QM calculations; either Lennard-Jones or Morse expressions were used to include the vdW terms in the force fields. The comparison of the simulated and experimental isotherms revealed that a strong interplay exists between the definition of the dispersion energies and the functional form used in the force field; these results are fairly general and reproducible, at least for the systems considered here. On this basis, the reliability of different models can be discussed, and a recipe can be provided to obtain accurate simulated adsorption isotherms.