Sustainable synthesis and remarkable adsorption capacity of MOF/graphene oxide and MOF/CNT based hybrid nanocomposites for the removal of Bisphenol A from water

Md Ariful Ahsan; Vahid Jabbari; Md Tariqul Islam; Reagan S Turley; Noemi Dominguez; Hoejin Kim; Edison Castro; Jose Angel Hernandez-Viezcas; Michael L Curry; Jorge Lopez; Jorge L Gardea-Torresdey; Juan C Noveron

doi:10.1016/j.scitotenv.2019.03.219

Sustainable synthesis and remarkable adsorption capacity of MOF/graphene oxide and MOF/CNT based hybrid nanocomposites for the removal of Bisphenol A from water

Sci Total Environ. 2019 Jul 10:673:306-317. doi: 10.1016/j.scitotenv.2019.03.219. Epub 2019 Mar 27.

Affiliations

¹ Department of Chemistry, University of Texas at El Paso, El Paso, TX 79968, United States; Nanosystems Engineering Research Center for Nanotechnology-Enabled Water Treatment, The University of Texas at El Paso, El Paso, TX, United States. Electronic address: mahsan2@miners.utep.edu.
² Department of Chemistry, Southern Methodist University, Dallas, TX 75205, United States.
³ Department of Chemistry, University of Texas at El Paso, El Paso, TX 79968, United States.
⁴ Department of Chemistry, University of Texas at El Paso, El Paso, TX 79968, United States; Nanosystems Engineering Research Center for Nanotechnology-Enabled Water Treatment, The University of Texas at El Paso, El Paso, TX, United States.
⁵ Department of Metallurgical, Materials and Biomedical Engineering, University of Texas at El Paso, El Paso, TX 79968, United States.
⁶ Department of Mechanical Engineering, University of Texas at El Paso, El Paso, TX 79968, United States.
⁷ Department of Chemistry, Tuskegee University, Tuskegee, AL 36088, United States.
⁸ Department of Physics, University of Texas at El Paso, El Paso, TX 79968, United States.
⁹ Department of Chemistry, University of Texas at El Paso, El Paso, TX 79968, United States; Nanosystems Engineering Research Center for Nanotechnology-Enabled Water Treatment, The University of Texas at El Paso, El Paso, TX, United States. Electronic address: jcnoveron@utep.edu.

PMID: 30991320
DOI: 10.1016/j.scitotenv.2019.03.219

Abstract

A series of novel absorbents based on Cu-BDC MOFs decorated over graphene oxide (GrO) and carbon nanotubes (CNTs) hybrid nanocomposites, namely Cu-BDC@GrO and Cu-BDC@CNT, are synthesized via a facile and one-pot green solvothermal method for water remediation. The nanocomposites were characterized by XRD, TEM, SEM, EDS, Raman, FTIR, TGA, XPS, Zetasizer and ICP-OES instruments. XRD results confirmed the high crystalline structure of the synthesized hybrid nanocomposites. Morphological analysis by SEM and TEM verified the successful decoration of nano-sized Cu-BDC MOFs over GrO and CNT platforms; whereas, EDS and XPS analysis confirmed the presence of all components in the hybrid nanocomposites. Bisphenol A was used in this study as a model organic pollutant that is sometimes present in the industrial wastewater to test the adsorption capacity of the prepared hybrid nanomaterials toward their removal from water. The hybrid nanomaterials showed remarkable adsorption capacity of 182.2 and 164.1 mg/g toward the removal of BPA, which was several times higher than that of 60.2 mg/g for Cu-BDC MOF itself. The Langmuir, Freundlich, Temkin and D-R isotherm models were applied to analyze the experimental data and the results revealed that the Freundlich model describes the experimental data best. A kinetic study was carried out and it showed that the prepared nanomaterials could remove maximum amount of BPA from water in 30 min. The pseudo-first order, pseudo-second order and intra-particle diffusion models were applied to evaluate the kinetic data and the results suggested that the kinetics data could be well fitted to the pseudo-second order kinetic model. Additionally, the BAP adsorption process onto the hybrid nanocomposites was spontaneous and exothermic. The π-π interactions between the BPA and hybrid nanomaterials played a vital role during the BPA adsorption process. The higher adsorption capacity and water stability makes them a good candidate for water remediation applications.

Keywords: Bisphenol A; Carbon nanotubes; Cu-BDC MOF; Graphene oxide; Nanocomposite; Water treatment.