Due to widespread use of fresh water in various industries there is increasing human exposure to heavy metals. Because of their high degree of toxicity, cadmium, chromium, lead, arsenic, and mercury are of greatest concern; these metals, which play no role in human homeostasis, induce multiple organ damage, cause birth defects, and are classified carcinogens. Given these problems, we have begun to explore the adsorption of heavy metals in metal-organic frameworks (MOFs), a relatively new class of nanoporous adsorbents that have quickly moved to the forefront of materials research due to unprecedented internal surface areas,<i> </i>easy chemical tunability, and the ability to adsorb significant amounts of guest species. The attraction to deploy MOFs in water purification technologies is due to their facile preparation and chemical tunability allowing their internal surface to be decorated with high densities of strong adsorption sites for heavy metal cations and, as a result, more control over their removal capacities, selectivities, and ease of regeneration compared to other commercially available sorbents such as activated carbons, zeolites, and silicas. In this presentation we will show our most recent results of several MOF based adsorbents and highlight their performance with regard to heavy metal extraction.<br/>

Fast and efficient heavy metal removal from contaminated water using metal-organic frameworks

254th National Meeting (2017)

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