ABSTRACT
This chapter describes the capabilities of mesoporous metal-organic frameworks (MOFs) to effectively remove pharmaceuticals from drinking water at their very low initial concentrations. It determines whether mesoporous MOFs can be used for adsorptive removal of small-molecule medicinal drugs and active pharmaceutical ingredients (APIs) from wastewaters of the pharmaceutical industry, where the initial concentrations of the drugs and the APIs are moderate. The high adsorbed amounts of biologically active compounds are essential for the controlled encapsulation of medicinal drugs on the MOFs by adsorption, and the subsequent controlled release of adsorbed drugs into physiological fluids, cells, or tissues. In order to achieve effective adsorption of large bioactive molecules, one needs to have mesoporous MOFs with large pore sizes, while the choice of available mesoporous MOFs is rather limited. Adsorption of large-molecule bio-organic compounds such as enzymes is particularly promising for applications of mesoporous MOFs as structural 'hosts', which form new kinds of composite biocatalysts.
