Waste to MOFs: sustainable linker, metal, and solvent sources for value-added MOF synthesis and applications

Abstract

Greening of the synthetic route for metal–organic frameworks (MOFs) has attracted much interest as a decisive step for practical industrial applications. For a more feasible process, employing waste plastic materials as a potential linker source for MOF synthesis is highly encouraging, combining a sustainable and environmentally friendly approach for scale-up production. The process is more economical when the whole MOF synthesis can be achieved based on waste metal and linker sources in the presence of green solvents derived from waste materials as well. Herein, we present a waste valorization approach for the preparation of MOFs based on different recycled polymer waste materials, MOFs based on waste metal sources, and MOFs based on the coupling of waste sources for both the organic ligand and metal center. This approach not only recycles discarded products but also produces high value-added costly materials for different applications.