In Situ Growth of Metal–Organic Frameworks in Three-Dimensional Aligned Lumen Arrays of Wood for Rapid and Highly Efficient Organic Pollutant Removal

Organic contaminants in water have become one of the most serious environmental problems worldwide. Adsorption is one of the most promising approaches to remove organic pollutants from water. However, the existing adsorbents have relatively low removal efficiency, complex preparation processes, and high cost, which limit their practical applications. Here, we developed three-dimensional (3D) zirconium metal–organic frameworks (MOFs) encapsulated in a natural wood membrane (UiO-66/wood membrane) for highly efficient organic pollutant removal from water. UiO-66 MOFs were in situ grown in the 3D low-tortuosity wood lumens by a facile solvothermal strategy. The resulting UiO-66/wood membrane contains the highly mesoporous UiO-66 MOF structure as well as many elongated and open lumens along the direction of the wood growth. Such a unique structural feature improves the mass transfer of organic pollutants and increases the contact probability of organic contaminants with UiO-66 MOFs as the water flows through the membrane, thereby improving the removal efficiency. Furthermore, the integrated multilayer filter consisting of three pieces of UiO-66/wood membranes exhibits a high removal efficiency (96.0%) for organic pollutants such as rhodamine 6G, propranolol, and bisphenol A at the flux of 1.0 × 103 L·m–2·h–1. The adsorbed capacity of UiO-66/wood for Rh6G (based on the content of UiO-66 MOFs) is calculated to be 690 mg·g–1. We believe that such low-cost and scalable production of the UiO-66/wood membrane has broad applications for wastewater treatment and other related pollutant removal.