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Waste PET-MOF-Cleanwater
Summary
Researchers developed a process to synthesise metal-organic frameworks (MOFs) from waste PET plastic as a cost-effective feedstock for MOF-based water treatment materials, aiming to address both the low recycling rate of waste PET in countries like South Africa and the high production costs that limit MOF implementation.
In countries like South Africa, firstly, the waste PET stream has posed a serious problem to the environment, and the current recycling of waste PET remains as low as 30%. The waste PET recycling industries such as PETCO & Extrupet (South Africa) are struggling to implement innovative processes to make cooperate more profitable. Secondly, metal-organic frameworks (MOFs) as a new class of porous materials, the MOFs-based water treatment holds the promises to provide cost-effective solutions dealing with the polluted water. However, the high costs of MOFs production have raised a challenge for its effective implementations. Given that, cross-cutting advances in materials and engineering will help to solve those societal challenges. To maintain the world-class research and development associated with human capacity in South Africa, this multidisciplinary and transdisciplinary work has been strengthened along with the basic-applied research continuum under the frame of South Africa (NRF)/Poland (NCBR) Joint Science and Technology Research Collaboration.
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