Synthesis of hierarchical-pore metal-organic framework on liter scale for large organic pollutants capture in wastewater

Abstract Large organic pollutants in wastewater are harmful to human health and environmental ecosystem, and it is of great importance to remove them from waste water. In this report, hierarchical-pore metal-organic frameworks with different mesopore sizes (H-UiO-66-3.8 nm and H-UiO-66-17.3 nm) have been successfully synthesized at reflux condition. The resulting MOFs are characterized by N 2 adsorption-desorption analysis and the results show that the samples have hierarchical-pore structures, which indicate the heat reflux method is efficient for the synthesis of H-UiO-66s on liter scale. In order to test the performance of H-UiO-66s for large organic pollutants capture, tetracycline (TC) was taken as an example to perform adsorption experiments. Remarkably, two kinds of H-UiO-66s exhibit significant improvement of adsorptive capacities compared with microporous UiO-66. The adsorption quantity of TC in H-UiO-66-17.3 nm is 666.67 mg·g −1 , which is 430% higher than the value in original microporous UiO-66. In addition, the capture ability of H-UiO-66-17.3 nm surpasses various reported adsorbent materials, such as nanocomposite, activated carbon and NH 2 -MIL-101(Cr). Meanwhile, the H-UiO-66-3.8 nm and H-UiO-66-17.3 nm also show high adsorption capacities for Rhodamine B (RhB) and tannic acid (TA), indicating H-UiO-66s have wide potential application for capture various large organic pollutants. These results show that H-UiO-66s can be successfully synthesized on liter scale under reflux condition and these materials perform excellent adsorption capacities for various organic pollutants, leading the potential application in wastewater treatment.