Metal Organic Frameworks (MOFs) as Formidable Candidate for Pharmaceutical Wastewater Treatment

Abstract

In recent years, the pharmaceutical field has significantly achieved magnificent progress owing to the necessities of human health and life; however, it also led to drastic environmental issues. The existence of pharmaceuticals in water bodies, which could cause adverse effects on human beings and environment, rose up distress worldwide. The pharmaceutical components found in water bodies have mainly two origins: manufacturing procedures in pharmaceutical industry and common usage of pharmaceutics. The essence of pharmaceutical wastewater (PWW) is intricate, including large amount of organic matter, high salt, microbial toxicity, and non-biodegradable. In sight of water scarcity means, it is essential to figure out and expand techniques for pharmaceutics derived wastewater in water management. Nevertheless, numerous treatment methods have been established to serve pharmaceutical wastewater including biological treatments, membrane technologies, hybrid technologies, advanced oxidation processes, absorption methods, etc. Recently, metal organic frameworks (MOFs), metallic ions clusters linked with organic bridging linkers, have been utilized in number of uses such as storage, separation, sensing, catalysis, adsorption, and many others. The viability of MOFs toward wastewater treatment (WWT) for various pollutants is fundamentally because of the extreme porosity, discrete pore structure, and superficial modification. This chapter highlights the origin and treatment of pharmaceutical wastewaters via the utilization of MOFs and their hybrid systems. A brief perception of the future work in the field has also been discussed.