Acid promoted activity of UiO-66 as an efficient adsorbent for boron removal from aqueous solution

It is a meaningful study to develop adsorbents with high adsorption capacity and fast adsorption rate for the removal of specific ions in aqueous solution. This paper mainly studies the removal of boron in aqueous solution by UiO-66. Regular octahedral structured UiO-66(HAC) via acetic acid-promoted was synthesized by a hydrothermal method. The boron adsorption kinetics, isotherms, thermodynamics, mechanism, and recycling on UiO-66(HAC) were further investigated in batch adsorption process, which found that adsorption capacity of UiO-66(HAC) is enhanced by 40% compared with UiO-66. UiO-66(HAC) exhibits great adsorption performance of 79.43 mg·g−1 at 25 °C and the adsorption process reaches equilibrium rapidly in 2 h. The selective adsorption of boron by UiO-66(HAC) is due to the presence of a large amount of Zr-OH which can chemically adsorb with boron. Compared with traditional boron removal adsorbents, UiO-66(HAC) has higher boron adsorption capacity and is easy to regenerate. It is a promising boron removal adsorbent in aqueous solution.