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Covalent organic framework membrane for efficient removal of emerging trace organic contaminants from water

Nature Water volume 1, pages 1059–1067 (2023)Cite this article

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Abstract

Emerging trace organic contaminants are harmful pollutants that accumulate over time and pose serious potential hazards to human health and the ecosystem. Membrane technology provides a promising and sustainable method to remove them from the water environment. However, the pore sizes of most commercial membranes are larger than the molecular size of most trace organic contaminants, making it challenging to achieve effective interception. Here,we propose a side-chain engineering strategy to regulate the pore size of covalent organic framework membranes from mesopore to micropore by introducing alkyl chains of varying lengths into their pore surfaces. The alkyl chain-appended covalent organic framework membranes show efficient interception of various organic pollutants, including citrate esters, nitropolycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons, organophosphate esters and pesticides as small as 0.35 nm, with a rejection rate greater than 99% and corresponding flux higher than 110 kg m−2 h−1 MPa−1. This work provides an avenue for effectively removing different types of organic pollutant from water resources to ensure the safety and sustainability of our water supply.

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Fig. 1: Three strategies to enhance the interception of small molecules by COF channels.
Fig. 2: Schematic diagrams for fabrication of Cn-COMs.
Fig. 3: Characteristics of the Cn-COFs and Cn-COMs.
Fig. 4: Separation performance of Cn-COMs for various pollutant aqueous solutions.
Fig. 5: Stability and performance comparison of Cn-COMs.

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Data availability

All data supporting the finding of this study are available within this article and its Supplementary information. The data that support the findings of this study and the raw data for all the figures have been uploaded to Figshare at https://doi.org/10.6084/m9.figshare.24418084.

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Acknowledgements

We gratefully acknowledge financial support from the Medical Innovation and Development Project of Lanzhou University (lzuyxcx-2022-156), CAMS Innovation Fund for Medical Sciences (CIFMS, 2019-I2M-5-074, 2021-I2M-1-026, 2021-I2M-3-001, 2022-I2M-2-002), the Natural Science Foundation of China (22171136) and the Natural Science Foundation of Jiangsu Province (BK20220079, BK20211521). G.Z. acknowledges the support of the Thousand Young Talent Plans. We thank S. Kitagawa at Kyoto University and D. Leigh at the University of Manchester for their helpful discussion on structure expression and pore flow mechanism.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Key Laboratory for Soft Chemistry and Functional Materials of Ministry of Education, School of Chemistry and Engineering, Nanjing University of Science and Technology, Nanjing, China

    Tongtong Liu, Zhen Shan, Miaomiao Wu, Bocong Li & Gen Zhang

  2. Key Laboratory of Environmental Remediation and Ecological Health of Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, School of Environmental and Biological Engineering, Nanjing University of Science and Technology, Nanjing, China

    Yayun Zhang, Hao Sun & Guanyong Su

  3. Key Laboratory of Preclinical Study for New Drugs of Gansu Province, School of Basic Medical Sciences and Research Unit of Peptide Science, Chinese Academy of Medical Sciences, Lanzhou University, Lanzhou, China

    Rui Wang & Gen Zhang

  4. State Key Laboratory of Bioactive Substance and Function of Natural Medicines, Institute of Materia Medica, Chinese Academy of Medical Sciences and Peking Union Medical College, Beijing, China

    Rui Wang

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Contributions

G.Z. and R.W. came up with ideas and design synthetic routes. T.L. synthesized the Cn-COM materials and did the characterization. T.L. and Y.Z. jointly completed evaluation of nanofiltration performance of Cn-COMs. Z.S. analysed and wrote the XRD and BET parts. G.S. analysed the nanofiltration part. M.W., B.L. and H.S. revised the manuscript. All authors have read and contributed to the manuscript.

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Correspondence to Guanyong Su, Rui Wang or Gen Zhang.

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Nature Water thanks Rahul Banerjee and the other, anonymous, reviewer for their contribution to the peer review of this work.

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Liu, T., Zhang, Y., Shan, Z. et al. Covalent organic framework membrane for efficient removal of emerging trace organic contaminants from water. Nat Water 1, 1059–1067 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1038/s44221-023-00162-w

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