Efficient recovery of gold from solution with a thiocyanate-modified Zr-MOF: adsorption properties and DFT calculations

Abstract

The design and development of new large-capacity and selective materials for extracting rare precious metals via electronic waste is practically essential. In this paper, a new efficient UiO-66-NCS has been obtained as a consequence of the modification of the classical Zr-MOF (UiO-66-NH₂), and its ability to recover gold has been investigated. These batch results adequately illustrated that UiO-66-NCS exhibited good adsorption capacity (675.5 mg g⁻¹) and exceptional selectivity. In addition, UiO-66-NCS achieved faster adsorption equilibrium times of about 120 min. Adsorption kinetics and isotherms demonstrated that the pseudo-second-order adsorption scheme and a Langmuir-type procedure were shown by the adsorption of Au(III) on UiO-66-NCS. Characterized by pH effect experiments, TEM, XRD, and XPS, the adsorption of UiO-66-NCS with Au(III) relies on coordination, which further results in reduction, and the generated Au(0) is uniformly dispersed in the MOF. The adsorbent has considerable advantages for cyclic regeneration. Finally, DFT fitting results showed that the adsorption binding energy of UiO-66-NCS with [AuCl₄]⁻ was −8.63 kcal mol⁻¹ for the adsorption process. UiO-66-NCS is likely to be an ideal substance for gold recovery.