Towards sustainable water purification: MOFs as a promising solution to eliminate toxic water pollutant resorcinol

Abstract

Abstract Water pollutants especially alcoholic based aromatic compounds are documented as emergent water pollutants and caused serious health problems for all living organisms. It is a major challenge for all researchers to synthesize effective adsorbents to eliminate these water pollutants. For this purpose, two MOFs were synthesized and characterized using SEM, FTIR, EDX and PXRD techniques. These MOFs exhibited excellent adsorption capacity for resorcinol and adsorption process was spontaneous, endothermic and proceeds with physiosorption as confirmed using thermodynamics data (∆H ads = 30.473 kJ/mol). Furthermore, separation-factor value was in the range of 0.0238–0.1312 for 30–100 ppm resorcinol concentration which represents that adsorption process was favorable. Langmuir and Pseudo 2nd order Models were best described which represented that chemisorption process also favored due to presence of –OH group and N-atom between adsorbent and adsorbate as well as monolayer adsorption-process is proceeded. Moreover, ion-exchange and electrostatic-interactions are the major interactions which are responsible for adsorption of resorcinol. Along with electrostatic-interactions, ion-exchange, hydrogen-bonding and π–π stacking/interactions are also accountable for adsorptive elimination of resorcinol. In summary we can conclude that MOFs are considered outstanding adsorbents for elimination of water pollutants to purify water, as water is very important for healthy life.