Metal-Organic Assemblies for Environmental Sustainability

Prof. Jorge A. Rodríguez Navarro

Title: Metal-organic assemblies for environmental sustainability.
Speaker: Prof. Jorge A. Rodríguez Navarro from the Department of Inorganic Chemistry, University of Granada.
When: 11:00 CET, Monday, December 12^th, 2023.
Place: Sala de Grados, Module 8, Faculty of Sciences, Universidad Autónoma de Madrid.

The high demand of food of the ever increasing global population involves the extensive use of agrochemicals to increase crop production. However, this goal also poses real threats to human health (110,000 deaths/year and 5 million pesticide related illnesses), aquatic ecosystems, and the environment at large. One of the most common classes of pesticides, organophosphates (OPs), are highly toxic to humans and ecosystems as a consequence of their acetylcholinesterase (AChE) inhibitory activity. An additional related concern, is the deliberate contamination with highly toxic organophosphate compounds as a consequence of the action of destabilizing groups. Finally, another problem associated with agricultural sustainability is the extensive use of phosphate fertilizers from non-renewable phosphate rock sources and their leaching to soil/aquatic media leading to severe environmental problems.

In this seminar, I will summarize some results of our group of what metal-organic frameworks (MOFs) and metal-organic polyhedra (MOPs) can offer to remediate this paramount health and environmental threat. Specific topics to be discussed include:
– Capture and detoxification of organophosphates.
– Reactivation of organophosphate inhibited AChE.
– Phosphate recovery from waste water.