Metal Organic Frameworks Used as Antibiotic Removal Agents in Water

Abstract

Currently, there are approximately 250 antibiotics registered for use in human and veterinary medicine worldwide, which, as a result of inadequate management and poor disposal of waste, among other bad practices in their management, are more common in wastewater; this situation has begun to attract more attention and be an interesting topic for the proposal of solutions. In the search for options to solve this problem, structured materials are being actively studied; one material that has received significant attention is the metal organic framework (MOF) type. The use of MOFs with various topologies and characteristics are demonstrating great effectiveness in the elimination of different types of contaminants from water, such as medications, such as anti-inflammatories, antibiotics, explosives, and heavy metals. Different antibiotics are used as models in these studies, from which it follows that the nature of the drugs that can be eliminated from effluents is very varied, which allows us to see that it can be an interesting option. Another objective pursued by these studies is to seek to establish the number of cycles in which these materials can be used to carry out the capture of drugs, as well as the type of kinetics that follow the adsorption of these materials in the MOFs.