Effective Techniques for Removing Glyphosate from Groundwater

Researchers have developed a new class of materials called metal-organic frameworks (MOFs) that can selectively and efficiently remove the herbicide glyphosate from groundwater. MOFs are highly porous, sponge-like networks with an extremely large surface area of up to 7000 m²/g. The researchers incorporated additional pores with a diameter of up to 10 nanometers, called mesopores, into the MOFs to solve the problem of accessibility of active sites deep inside the material. The new material was able to remove three times as much glyphosate in only 20% of the time as the currently best adsorbent.