article · ACS Sustainable Chemistry & Engineering
Hazardous chromium-bearing electroplating sludge has been converted into a metal-organic framework, MIL-53(Cr), using a hydrothermal process carried out with and without hydrofluoric acid. The resulting material was applied as an adsorbent to extract dibenzothiophene from liquid fuel. Formulations prepared with hydrofluoric acid exhibited an improved desulfurisation capacity of 40.11 milligrams per gram, outperforming the acid-free preparation which achieved 32.80 milligrams per gram. This higher capacity is attributed to the creation of highly crystalline, porous microrods with increased surface area and strong metal-sulfur interactions. Regeneration tests showed the material maintained 94 percent of its initial sulfur uptake capacity across five cycles. The method is described as novel, scalable, and time-efficient, turning hazardous industrial waste into functional materials.
Electroplating sludge contains hazardous heavy metals that require safe disposal to prevent environmental contamination. Converting this industrial waste into porous frameworks delivers a dual benefit: it neutralises solid waste hazards and produces functional materials capable of purifying transport fuels by removing unwanted sulfur compounds.
This process is targeted at fuel desulfurisation applications, which could benefit fuel refiners and waste recycling operators looking to extract value from toxic metal residues. The abstract describes the synthetic method as green, time-efficient, and scalable, with performance demonstrated through five regeneration cycles. It represents applied laboratory research that requires industrial piloting and validation on real-world fuel streams before commercial deployment.
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The recycling of heavy metals from solid wastes and transforming these metals into useful materials, such as metal oxides, nanocomposites, and metal–organic frameworks (MOFs), are beneficial for both sustainable development and environmental protection. MOFs are promising for adsorptive desulfurization, owing to their extremely high surface areas and tunable structures. In this paper, for the first time, MIL-53(Cr) was successfully fabricated from electroplating sludge (EPS) as a metal source through a facile hydrothermal method with and without HF. Our synthetic method is novel, green, scalable, and time-efficient. The obtained MIL-53(Cr) was employed as an adsorbent for adsorptive dibenzothiophene removal from liquid fuel. MIL-53(Cr) with HF exhibits a higher desulfurization capacity (40.11 mg g–1) than that of MIL-53(Cr) without HF (32.80 mg g–1). The improved adsorption performance of MIL-53(Cr) with HF is attributed to adding a small amount of HF, which produces highly crystalline and relativity pure MIL-53(Cr) microrods with a high surface area and porosity, and is due to a robust metal–sulfur interaction. Furthermore, the regenerated adsorbent can retain 94% of its initial sulfur adsorption capability even after 5 cycles, implying that MIL-53(Cr) prepared from Cr-EPS is an efficient adsorbent for fuel desulfurization. This study provides new insight for the production of high-value-added MOF materials from solid wastes following the principle of “resource reuse”.
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DOI: 10.1021/acssuschemeng.0c03110
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