SU‑101 for the removal of pharmaceutical active compounds by the combination of adsorption/photocatalytic processes Chacón García, Antonio J. Rojas Macías, Sara Grape, Erik Svensson Salles, Fabrice Willhammar, Tom Inge, A. Ken Pérez, Yolanda Horcajada, Patricia SU-101 Photoactive Bi-MOF Pharmaceutical active compounds Pharmaceutical active compounds (PhACs) are some of the most recalcitrant water pollutants causing undesired environmental and human effects. In absence of adapted decontamination technologies, there is an urgent need to develop efficient and sustainable alternatives for water remediation. Metal–organic frameworks (MOFs) have recently emerged as promising candidates for adsorbing contaminants as well as providing photoactive sites, as they possess exceptional porosity and chemical versatility. To date, the reported studies using MOFs in water remediation have been mainly focused on the removal of a single type of PhACs and rarely on the combined elimination of PhACs mixtures. Herein, the eco-friendly bismuth-based MOF, SU-101, has been originally proposed as an efficient adsorbent-photocatalyst for the elimination of a mixture of three challenging persistent PhACs, frequently detected in wastewater and surface water in ng L−1 to mg·L−1 concentrations: the antibiotic sulfamethazine (SMT), the anti-inflammatory diclofenac (DCF), and the antihypertensive atenolol (At). Adsorption experiments of the mixture revealed that SU-101 exhibited a great adsorption capacity towards At, resulting in an almost complete removal (94.1 ± 0.8% for combined adsorption) in only 5 h. Also, SU-101 demonstrated a remarkable photocatalytic activity under visible light to simultaneously degrade DCF and SMT (99.6 ± 0.4% and 89.2 ± 1.4%, respectively). In addition, MOF-contaminant interactions, the photocatalytic mechanism and degradation pathways were investigated, also assessing the toxicity of the resulting degradation products. Even further, recycling and regeneration studies were performed, demonstrating its efficient reuse for 4 consecutive cycles without further treatment, and its subsequent successful regeneration by simply washing the material with a NaCl solution. 2024-09-05T07:57:43Z 2024-09-05T07:57:43Z 2024-04-03 journal article Chacón-García, A.J., Rojas, S., Grape, E.S. et al. SU-101 for the removal of pharmaceutical active compounds by the combination of adsorption/photocatalytic processes. Sci Rep 14, 7882 (2024). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-024-58014-w https://hdl.handle.net/10481/93970 10.1038/s41598-024-58014-w eng http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ open access Atribución 4.0 Internacional Springer Nature