Porous lightweight metal organic materials: environment sustainability

Abstract

Lightweight Metal Organic Frameworks (MOFs) sorbents are chemical versatile and highly porous materials that have been widely tuned to enhance their affinity and capacity to capture of metal ions with different chemical nature from aqueous environments. In this chapter, the key chemical features within the MOF chemistry to recover effectively cationic and anionic species from water have been described, reviewing in detail their performance to capture heavy metals, precious metal ions, radioactive elements, technologically relevant rare earth elements, chromium, arsenic and other ions. Previously performed proof of concept studies of MOF for metal ions recovery will be described in detail, specifically pointing the MOF capacity and affinity at different application media, from simple single element dilute solution to highly stringent multi-element radioactive acid aqueous wastes. Special attention will be paid to describe the adsorption mechanisms that have been doubtlessly solved, as well as to the multi-methodological techniques applied to unravel them.