An eco-friendly approach for heavy metal adsorbent regeneration using CO₂-responsive molecular octopus

Perennial problems of adsorption in wastewater treatment include adsorbent recycling, generation of waste sludge and secondary pollution because harmful concentrated acids, bases or strong chelators are often used for adsorbent regeneration and adsorbate recovery. We report, for the first time, an eco-friendly regeneration concept demonstrated with a CO₂-responsive octopus-like polymeric adsorbent. Various heavy metals can be scavenged at very high Q_e by such adsorbent through coordination. Most importantly, the rapid and complete regeneration of the adsorbent and recovery of the heavy metal ions can be readily achieved by CO₂ bubbling within a few minutes under mild conditions, i.e., room temperature and atmospheric pressure. The adsorbent can then be restored to its adsorptive state and reused upon removal of CO₂ by simply bubbling another gas. This eco-friendly, effective, ultra-fast and repeatable CO₂-triggered regeneration process using CO₂-responsive adsorbent with versatile structure, morphology or form can be incorporated into a sustainable closed-loop wastewater treatment process to solve the perennial problems.