ABSTRACT
Large amount of polyethylene terephthalate (PET) plastics waster and emerging contaminants in water, including fluoroquinolone antibiotics, pose challenges to human survival. In this work, a green synthesis scheme is proposed in which the defective UiO-66 (d-UiO-66) is fabricated via a solvent-free routine by using PET plastics waster as raw materials for lomefloxacin (LOM) removal. In comparison with defect-free UiO-66, the created defect imparts d-UiO-66 with higher porosity and abundant defective Zr sites, which are beneficial to boost LOM adsorption. As expected, d-UiO-66 exhibited excellent LOM adsorption performances, showcasing a saturation adsorption capacity of 588 mg g-1 and a kinetic rate constant of 0.204 g mg-1 h-1, which are 3.5 and 2.0 times higher than those of the pristine UiO-66, respectively. Remarkably, the LOM saturation adsorption capacity of d-UiO-66 surpasses that of all reported adsorbents. Mechanism study reveals that this outstanding adsorption performance of d-UiO-66 is mainly ascribed to the abundant defective sites, high porosity, together with the strong hydrogen bonding interaction and π-π stacking interaction between d-UiO-66 and LOM. Therefore, the d-UiO-66 obtained by the solvent-free method can not only effectively upcycle PET plastic waster, but also efficiently remove LOM, demonstrating a potential routine to simultaneous address the solid PET waster and wastewater.
