Hydrophobic metal-organic adsorbents to decontaminate water from Per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances

Aligned with the United Nations SDGs 3 and 6: ‘Good Health and Well-being’ and ‘Clean Water and Sanitation’ respectively, and Stockholm convention regulations on restricted contaminants in drinking water, removal of Per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS) is a global challenge of twenty-first century.

Traditional PFAS decontamination involving adsorption on granular activated carbon (GAC) as state-of-the-art method suffers from slow kinetics, interference during adsorption and high energy footprint of regeneration. These pitfalls foster the search for alternative energy-efficient adsorbents that rely upon regenerable adsorption.

Development of underexplored as well as new generations of hydrophobic metal-organic frameworks (HMOFs) and derived hybrid composites have the potential to provide a better solution for PFAS removal.

Incisive structure-function insights on PFAS adsorbent design will lead to benchmark PFAS adsorbents a priori, stemming from porous and modularly built HMOFs.

Optimization of operating conditions/adsorbent columns design will synergistically maximize PFAS removal efficiencies (quantitatively >2-3 times over GAC) in order to decrypt the key structural chemistry-PFAS adsorption relationships in three generations of HMOFs to enable them emerge as benchmark materials.

Whereas my current research theme focuses upon ‘Physical chemistry and electrochemistry of metal-organic solids and surfaces’, I will complement my expertise by training through research mainly on a) hydrophobic MOF composites with surface fabrication and/or defect chemistry, b) custom-designed PFAS decontamination-friendly columns, c) simulation tools to map PFAS-adsorbent interactions during my MSCA IF at TU Munich.

Long-term career goal set at being a world leader in Purification Chemistry, this fellowship will be decisive for me to achieve academic independence, aided by research career start-up grants leading to tenure track professorships within EU.