Sustainable utilization of palladium from industrial catalytic waste by a smart magnetic nano stirring robot

The rapid and accurate recovery of precious metal palladium from waste resources has always been a hot and challenging topic. In addition, from the perspective of energy and environmental protection, the regeneration and rational use of waste are also crucial for a sustainable future. Here, an 8-aminoquinoline-modified core–shell magnetic nano stirring robot (MNSR@PGMA-AQ) towards Pd(Ⅱ) is reported which not only has ultra-high solid–liquid separation efficiency but also can accelerate the mass transfer rate in adsorption through self-stirring. A series of adsorption experiments show that MNSR@PGMA-AQ has fast adsorption kinetics, reaching 10.97 mg g −1 in 20 min, which is 85.87 % of the equilibrium adsorption capacity. And selectivity parameters such as distribution coefficient ( K D ), separation factor ( α ) and concentration factor ( CF ) demonstrate its excellent adsorption selectivity for Pd(Ⅱ). Moreover, it is proved that the adsorption mechanism of MNSR@PGMA-AQ towards Pd(Ⅱ) is ion exchange and chelation, which mainly depends on the functional monomer 8-aminoquinoline. The regeneration and palladium recovery experiments in actual samples further prove the application value of this novel robot. Furthermore, Pd-loaded MNSR@PGMA-AQ was used as a catalyst for the Suzuki-Miyaura cross-coupling reaction and investigated its catalytic performance to pursue the goal of waste regeneration and responsible catalyst manufacture.