Metal-organic framework for removal of environmental contaminants

Environmental pollution has become a great menace in recent years due to its direct as well as indirect effects on living organisms, including humans, flora, and fauna. Different classes of contaminants, including dyes, heavy metals, pharmaceuticals, organic, and inorganic molecules are greatly contributing toward the global rise of pollution. It is the utmost need of the hour to design ecofriendly, efficient, and economic strategies for the evacuation of such toxins. Considering the modern means of equipment and advanced knowledge, metal-organic frameworks (MOFs) have become the center of focus for the aforementioned purposes. MOFs, also termed porous coordination polymers, have grabbed the attention of scientists due to their highly defined structure and advanced properties like highly porous structure and hybrid nature, containing properties of both organic and inorganic counterparts, synthetic benefits, and presence of coordinated atoms. The exploitation of MOFs and their derivatives in the field of wastewater remediation has greatly flourished lately. This chapter covers the usage of MOFs in the removal of hazardous contaminants from wastewater bodies through different techniques.