The removal of bisphenol A from aqueous solutions by MIL-53(Al) and mesostructured MIL-53(Al)

In this work, metal-organic framework MIL-53(Al){Al(OH)[O2C-C6H4-CO2]} and MIL-53(Al)-F127{Al(OH)[O2C-C6H4-CO2]} were synthesized and used as sorbents to remove bisphenol A (BPA) from aqueous system. The sorption kinetics data of BPA were found to be in agreement with the pseudo-second-order model. The equilibrium sorption amounts of BPA on MIL-53(Al) and MIL-53(Al)-F127 reached 329.2 +/- 16.5 and 472.7 +/- 23.6 mg g(-1), respectively, far more than that of commercial activated carbons (ranging from 129.6 to 263.1 mg g(-1)). Both MIL-53(Al) and MIL-53(Al)-F127 could remove BPA fast from aqueous solutions, and the required contact time to reach equilibrium was approximately 90 min for MIL-53(AI) and 30 min for MIL-53(Al)-F127, respectively. The optimum pH levels for the removal of BPA using MIL-53 (Al) and MIL-53(Al)-F127 were 4 and 6 separately. The optimum temperature for the sorption behavior of BPA on the two sorbents was 20 degrees C. The results performed show that the resulting products, as one kind of MOFs, can be regarded as a new class of sorbents for water treatment and could find great applications in the fields of environmental water pollution control and resources reuse. (C) 2013 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.