Water Contaminant Elimination Based on Metal-Organic Frameworks and Perspective on Their Industrial Applications

Nowadays, one of the most challenging sustainability issues faced by society is the safety of water resources. Water pollution caused by hazardous contaminants (e.g., heavy metal ions, emerging contaminants, organic dyes) is a serious issue because of acute toxicities and the carcinogenic nature of the pollutants. With the advent of materials engineering, unprecedented technical advances have been achieved through diverse technologies in recent decades, including photocatalytic oxidation, photo-Fenton, electron Fenton, adsorption, and separation. However, the applications of these technologies have suffered from several limitations, such as the uncompleted degradation efficiency, high energy consumption, narrow pH range for application etc. Metal-organic frameworks (MOFs) have aroused increasing studies in gas storage, separation, sensing, water/air purification, and catalysis. The effectiveness of the above applications has been extensively recognized. In recent years, these highly ordered and porous crystalline structures have been recognized as a potential alternative to overcome the technical limitations in the area of water pollution control. This perspective article reports recent progress in the applications of MOFs in the field of environmental pollutant elimination, including the adsorption, advanced oxidation process (AOP) heterogeneous Fenton-like reactions, and MOF-based membranes for pollutant filtration.