Adsorptive Recovery of Heavy Metal Ions from Aquatic Systems Using Metal‐Organic Frameworks: A Perspective in the Sustainable Development of Nanomaterials

Abstract

Rapid industrialization in the developing countries has facilitated the unwanted mixing of wastes into the already depleting sources of potable, domestic and industrial water. In particular, the mixing of toxic heavy metal wastes into the aquatic resources have not only increased the scarcity of water at the different levels of usage but also hygiene of the ecosystem is further threatened by the presence of abysmal quality of aquatic environment around the living world. Thus, it has become quite imperative to mitigate such problems through the removal of such water contaminants at the sources before supplied for a specific purpose. In this direction, among the other available mass transfer techniques, specific and efficient adsorption of heavy metal species on the nanomaterials such as metal‐organic frameworks (MOFs) are found to be a promising method of heavy metal ions recovery. This reports targets to provide a new perspective into heavy metal ions removal from wastewater as a rationale for sustainable nanomaterial engineering through the recycling of toxic metal species as precious precursors in the synthesis of nanomaterials. Decades of exploring materials sciences led to the generation of groundbreaking materials of nanoscale regime, which has advanced myriad avenues of science and technology, viz. electronic, energy, biomedical, environmental, agriculture applications, and more. In this regard, nanotechnology has had a global impact by several folds, which can be observed in all day‐to‐day facilities. This perspective aims to conceptualize a strategy of wastewater decontamination through the adsorptive retrieval of heavy metal species to be subsequently recycled in the design of smart nanomaterials.