Recyclable Engineering of Metal–Organic Frameworks toward Sustainable Water Remediation: From Strategies to Applications

Metal-organic frameworks (MOFs) are extensively used to purify wastewater because of their high specific surface areas and unique photoresponsive electron transport channels. Unfortunately, extensive powder forms of MOFs are challenging to recycle, resulting in additional costs and secondary contamination. Therefore, researchers have attempted to incorporate magnetic components or self-supporting architectures to achieve solid-liquid separation and continuous operation in easy-to-use devices. Given the lack of systematic discussion on recycling technologies, this review outlines a detailed classification of construction strategies for the efficient recyclability of MOF-based adsorbents and photocatalysts. In addition, specific applications of recyclable MOF-based materials in adsorption and advanced oxidation processes are documented based on recent reports. Meanwhile, we summarized auxiliary methods typically used to evaluate recycling performances as well as standard approaches employed to probe their mechanisms. Finally, the difficulties and future scopes that need to be further explored and overcome are envisioned for MOF-dominated sustainable water decontamination.