A customized sulfur-doping Zr-MOF-fabric composite for selective and efficient gold recovery

Metal-organic frameworks (MOFs) have exhibited great potential in various adsorption and separation fields, such as the adsorption of metal ions, separation of organic pollutants, and recovery of precious metals from aqueous-based matrices. Here, we prepared a series of sulfur-doping Zr-MOF-fabric composites by in-situ growth of zirconium metal ions with sulfur-containing organic ligands on the surface of carboxylated fabrics (CF-Ph-COOH). The formic acid (FA) regulated mercaptosuccinic acid (MSA) and 2,2’-dithiobisbenzoic acid (DTSA) Zr-MOF-fabric (CF-Zr-MSA-FA and CF-Zr-DTSA-FA) composites exhibit excellent Au 3 + adsorption from water with saturated adsorption capacities of 141.15 mg/g and 169.28 mg/g, respectively, and showing over 90 % adsorption removal rate in the pH range of 2–6, especially for CF-Zr-DTSA-FA could maintain more than 99.99 %. Most strikingly, the prepared MOF-fabric composites display excellent selective adsorption for Au 3+ in mixed solutions, and the selective adsorption efficiency of CF-Zr-MSA-FA and CF-Zr-DTSA-FA was up to 95.69 % and 85.37 %, respectively. Finally, the prepared MOF-fabric composites can be reused as filtering membrane for gold recovery, which also could provide a facile strategy to recover gold from water, and extending the practical applications of MOFs textile composite.