Thanks to the high specific surface area, flexibly modifiable structure and abundant coordination environment, metal-organic frameworks (MOFs) have been widely used in the field of advanced oxidation to enhance the removal efficiency of pollutants. Currently, constructing two-dimensional (2D) and three-dimensional (3D) MOFs-based macroscopic materials toward removing pollutants safely and efficiently is a research hotspot but difficult work in the field of advanced oxidation. To this end, researchers from the Institute of Urban Environment, Chinese Academy of Sciences selected ZIF-67 as the precursor, and commercial activated alumina (γ-Al2O3, 3 – 5 mm in diameter) as the support to develop a novel millimeter-scale CoAl2O4/Co2AlO4@Al2O3 pellets, followed by a systematic investigation on the quantitative relationship between the structures of CoAl2O4/Co2AlO4@Al2O3 and their catalytic activities (refer to Chemical Engineering Journal, 2020, 397:125339, Chemical Engineering Journal, 2021, 409: 128162).
To date, the catalytical elimination of emerging pollutants by the MOFs-based catalysts is mainly focuses on their individual removal behaviors. There exists a paucity of knowledge regarding the simultaneous removal of multiple emerging pollutants by the MOFs-based catalysis process. Toward this end, the research group carried out an in-depth study on the simultaneous removal of carbamazepine (CBZ) and metronidazole (MNZ) by monolithic Co2AlO4@Al2O3 (MCA) activated PMS. The oxidation kinetics, reaction mechanism and product toxicity hasd been systematically studied to reveal the simultaneous removal behaviors of CBZ and MNZ. This study is helpful to further explore the application potential of millimeter-scale CoAl2O4/Co2AlO4@Al2O3 pellets in co-removing multiple pollutants and simultaneously providing useful reference for designing other macroscopic MOFs-based composites.
Recently, these findings have been also published in the journal of Chemical Engineering Journal with the title of Deciphering the simultaneous removal of carbamazepine and metronidazole by monolithic CoAl2O4/Co2AlO4@Al2O3 activated peroxymonosulfate. The first author of this paper is Ms. ZHU Min-Ping (a Ph.D candidate in 2019), and the corresponding authors are Professor FU Ming-Lai and Dr. YANG Jia-Cheng. This study was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (No. 51978638 and 51808524) and the Natural Science Foundation of Fujian Province (No. 2020J01120).
Proposed scheme for the individual and simultaneous removal of CBZ and MNZ by CoAl2O4/Co2AlO4@Al2O3 /PMS system
