A porous Fe‐based porphyrinic metal–organic framework for highly effective removal of organic azo‐dye

Abstract

With the rapid development of the global dye industry, a series of environmental problems affecting the ecosystem and human health has been perceived. In this work, a porous porphyrin catecholate iron‐based metal–organic framework (MOF) (PorphCat‐Fe) has been prepared and evaluated for the first time for adsorptive removal of azo‐dye methyl orange (MO) pollutant from aqueous media. Consequently, various MO adsorption factors using PorphCat‐Fe MOF were studied and optimized. PorphCat‐Fe was able to remove about 98% of the pollutant from the water within 20 min in the batch experiments with maximum adsorption capacity of 232.5 mg g−1. Under optimum conditions, the limit of detection (LOD) was found to be 0.8 μg L−1. The MOF could maintain its adsorption efficiency toward MO in the real samples. The combination of electrostatic attractions, hydrophobic and π–π interactions, and iron‐organic coordination bonding make PorphCat‐Fe able to show the superior MO adsorption capacity. Remarkably, the removal efficiency of MO was nearly unchanged after five regeneration sequences on PorphCat‐Fe. This effort offers the ability for application of MOFs beyond metal‐carboxylate linkers in wastewater remediation.