Antibiotics has been widely used as a veterinary medicine and as medication for humans. However, it also has been an emerging pollutant in water. for its environmental residues increase the resistance of bacteria. What's worse, resistance genes continuing to expand and evolve in the environment could even create "super bacteria".

Given this, a study team led by Prof. KONG Lingtao from Institute of Intelligent Machines under Hefei Institutes of Physical Science has synthesized the metal-organic framework (MOF) nanomaterials successfully to remove antibiotics from water (Applied Surface Science, "High-efficiency adsorption of norfloxacin using octahedral UIO-66-NH₂ nanomaterials: Dynamics, thermodynamics, and mechanisms").

(a) SEM images of and UiO-66-NH₂; (b) Adsorption isotherms at different temperatures of NOR adsorption on UiO-66-NH₂.

Image: ZHANG Kaisheng

The researchers used a simple hydrothermal method to synthesize the Zr-MOFs (UiO-66-NH₂) with excellent stability in water and applied them to the experimental study of removing norfloxacin (NOR) antibiotics in water. The adsorption capacities of UiO-66-NH₂ reached a maximum of 222.5 mg/g for NOR, which were considerably higher than that of most reported adsorbents.

Plausible adsorption mechanism of NOR adsorption on UiO-66-NH₂.

Image: ZHANG Kaisheng

At a concentration of 10 mg/L, the highest partition coefficient of 20.9 mg/g/µM was obtained, and the removal rate of NOR was as high as 91.6%, implying that UiO-66-NH₂ offered considerable adsorption performance at a low concentration of NOR.

Finally, several credible adsorption mechanisms were proposed.

Chinese Academy of Sciences. Posted: May 13, 2020.

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