Upcycling can waste and plastic bottle as functional material: Analysis of green process and simultaneous adsorption-photocatalytic performances

This study presents an investigation of chemical and physical characterization, green process analysis, techno-economic considerations, and carbon emissions for synthesizing metal-organic frameworks (MOFs) from plastic and can waste using microwave-assisted synthesis. The microwave-assisted synthesis proves to be more cost-effective, with a reduction in CO2 emissions by up to 80%. The synthesized material (MIL-Mw-U) demonstrates excellent performance in methylene blue (MB) removal, achieving 98.41% removal, with 97.87% removal although the catalyst is used in the third cycle. The adsorption of methylene blue (MB) onto MIL-Mw-U achieved a maximum capacity of 295.26 mgg⁻1 at pH 3 and decreased to 258.68 mgg⁻1 at pH 11 due to OH⁻ competition. The Langmuir isotherm (R2 = 0.9381) and pseudo-second-order kinetics (R2 = 0.999) confirmed monolayer chemisorption as the dominant mechanism. This innovative approach supports circular economy principles by converting can and plastic bottle waste into functional material for dye removal, offering sustainable solutions for environmental challenges.