Development of cerium-trimesic acid complexed 2D frameworks for effective nitrate and phosphate remediation

Abstract

The excess amounts of nitrate (NO3−) and phosphate (PO43−) in drinking water system leads to methemoglobinemia and eutrophication problems. To overcome such troubles by developing metal-organic frameworks (MOFs) may be the current trends for the effective remediation of NO3− and PO43−. Hence cerium (Ce3+) linkage on trimesic acid (TA) (CTA) based MOFs (CTA MOFs) were synthesized which considered as the best option for the adsorption process. The active functional groups, thermal nature, crystallinity, elemental formation and the porous surface nature of the CTA MOFs investigated using TGA, DTA, XRD, FTIR, EDAX and BET studies. The developed CTA MOFs remove NO3− and PO43− by means of electrostatic attraction and surface complex formation. The adsorption process was found to be feasible, endothermic, monolayer coverage during NO3− adsorption and multilayer coverage during PO43- adsorption. The developed CTA MOFs was treated with the collected water sample, showed the positive results which confirm the field applicability of CTA MOFs. The proposed MOFs acts as a constructive and regenerable tool for the quantification and rejection of nutrients by adsorption.