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Author Spotlight: Functionalizing Metal-Organic Frameworks: Advancements, Challenges, and the Power of Post-Synthetic Ligand Exchange
Published on: June 23, 2023
Catalytic Degradation of Polyethylene Terephthalate Using a Phase-Transitional Zirconium-Based Metal-Organic
Yufang Wu1,2, Xingjie Wang2, Kent O Kirlikovali2
1School of Chemistry and Chemical Engineering, South China University of Technology, Guangzhou, Guangdong, 510640, P. R. China.
Abstract:
Polyethylene terephthalate (PET) is utilized as one of the most popular consumer plastics worldwide, but difficulties associated with recycling PET have generated a severe environmental crisis with most PET ending its lifecycle in landfills. We report that zirconium-based metal-organic framework (Zr-MOF) UiO-66 deconstructs waste PET into the building blocks terephthalic acid (TA) and mono-methyl terephthalate (MMT) within 24 hours at 260 °C (total yield of 98 % under 1 atm H2 and 81 % under 1 atm Ar). Extensive structural characterization studies reveal that during the degradation process, UiO-66 undergoes an intriguing transformation into MIL-140A, which is another Zr-MOF that shows good catalytic activity toward PET degradation under similar reaction conditions. These results illustrate the diversity of applications for Zr-MOFs and establish MOFs as a new class of polymer degradation catalysts with the potential to address long-standing challenges associated with plastic waste.
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