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A sunlight-responsive metal–organic framework system for sustainable water desalination

Nature Sustainability volume 3, pages 1052–1058 (2020)Cite this article

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Abstract

Light-responsive materials with high adsorption capacity and sunlight-triggered regenerability are highly desired for their low-cost and environmentally friendly industrial separation processes. Here we report a poly(spiropyran acrylate) (PSP) functionalized metal–organic framework (MOF) as a sunlight-regenerable ion adsorbent for sustainable water desalination. Under dark conditions, the zwitterionic isomer quickly adsorbs multiple cations and anions from water within 30 minutes, with high ion adsorption loadings of up to 2.88 mmol g−1 of NaCl. With sunlight illumination, the neutral isomer rapidly releases these adsorbed salts within 4 minutes. Single-column desalination experiments demonstrated that PSP–MOF works efficiently for water desalination. A freshwater yield of 139.5 l kg−1 d−1 and a low energy consumption of 0.11 Wh l−1 would be reached for desalinating 2,233 ppm synthetic brackish water. Importantly, this adsorbent shows excellent stability and cycling performance. This work opens up a new direction for designing stimuli-responsive materials for energy-efficient and sustainable desalination and water purification.

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Fig. 1: Demonstration of PSP-MIL-53 for light-triggered reversible salt adsorption.
Fig. 2: NaCl adsorption and desorption performance of PSP-MIL-53.
Fig. 3: Single-column desalination performance of PSP-MIL-53.

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The data supporting the findings of this study are available in the paper and its Supplementary Information files.

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Acknowledgements

This work is supported by the Australia Research Council (project no. LP160101228). We thank the staff of the Monash Centre for Electron Microscopy (MCEM) for their technical support and assistance with the electron microscopy.

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Author notes

  1. These authors contributed equally: Ranwen Ou, Huacheng Zhang, Vinh X. Truong.

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Chemical Engineering, Monash University, Clayton, Victoria, Australia

    Ranwen Ou, Huacheng Zhang, Lian Zhang, Hanaa M. Hegab, Jue Hou, Xiwang Zhang, Lei Jiang & Huanting Wang

  2. College of the Environment & Ecology, Xiamen University, Xiamen, PR China

    Ranwen Ou

  3. Monash Institute of Medical Engineering, Monash University, Clayton, Victoria, Australia

    Vinh X. Truong

  4. Department of Materials Science and Engineering, Monash University, Clayton, Victoria, Australia

    Vinh X. Truong & George P. Simon

  5. School of Chemical Engineering and Energy, Zhengzhou University, Zhengzhou, China

    Li Han

  6. School of Civil and Environmental Engineering, The University of New South Wales, Sydney, New South Wales, Australia

    Ana Deletic

  7. Key Laboratory of Bioinspired Materials and Interfacial Science, Technical Institute of Physics and Chemistry, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, People’s Republic of China

    Lei Jiang

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Contributions

R.O., H.Z. and H.W. designed the experiments. R.O. and V.X.T. performed the synthesis of the samples. R.O., V.X.T., H.M.H., J.H. and L.H. performed the characterizations. R.O. and L.Z. calculated the energy consumption. R.O., H.Z., V.X.T. and H.W. wrote the paper. G.P.S., A.D., L.Z., X.Z. and L.J. contributed to the project discussions and manuscript writing.

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Correspondence to Huanting Wang.

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Supplementary Figs. 1–20, Tables 1–7 and Notes 1–7.

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Ou, R., Zhang, H., Truong, V.X. et al. A sunlight-responsive metal–organic framework system for sustainable water desalination. Nat Sustain 3, 1052–1058 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41893-020-0590-x

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