(638a) Strategizing Sorbent Design: Enhancing Removal of Emerging Contaminants for Water Remediation

Emerging contaminants, including pharmaceuticals, personal care products, and herbicide, pose a threat to water quality and ecosystem health, including human society as they are not effectively removed with traditional wastewater treatment plants. The complex interactions between the adsorbents and emerging contaminants in various aqueous phase are still not yet fully understand, and hinder the strategical development of the materials for their enhanced and selective removal. This study, therefore, aims to address this challenge by exploring strategical approaches to design the engineered material via understanding the adsorption mechanisms and kinetics of selected emerging contaminants under various aqueous conditions. Here, we synthesized a water-robust MOF, UiO-66, and physically and chemically modified UiO-66 to determine the effective approaches to remove emerging contaminants. This study tested tetracycline, sulfathiazole, and atrazine as the representative emerging contaminants from the agriculture and livestock industry. Our findings reveal that physically modified MOF with controlled defects exhibited enhanced kinetics and isotherm relative to chemically modified adsorbents, even with presence of different types of co-existing cations (K, Na, Mg, and Ca) and anions (nitrate, sulfate) for tetracycline. Moreover, this physically modified MOF demonstrated robustness after multiple cycles of re-use, and exhibited enhanced selectivity towards hydrophilic emerging contaminant relative to activated carbon, a widely used adsorbents for water remediation. The results of this study offer valuable insights into the development of future sorbents with controllable properties for selective and enhanced water remediation, thereby contributing to addressing challenges in water-energy-food-environmental (WEFE) nexus.