Synthesis and characterization of metallized metal-organic frameworks and their use in the production of vanillin

Agricultural wastes are renewable raw material sources and conversion of these wastes to high value added products has gained more importance with global warming. As it is known, tea is the most important agricultural product of Rize and the surrounding provinces and approximately 30 000 tons of factory tea waste is produced each year during tea production. Metal-organic frameworks (MOFs) which are the rapidly developing materials of the scientific world because of diversity of their application areas and tailored structures. UiO-66 (UiO = University of Oslo) type metal-organic frameworks which have high chemical and thermal stability can be prepared by the reaction of benzene-1,4′-dicarboxylic acid with zirconium (IV) metal ions are preferred in terms of production and ease of use among these materials. In this thesis, UiO-66 type new metal-organic frameworks were prepared and transformed into the iron, copper or iron+copper containing metal-organic frameworks via post-synthetic metallation. The synthesized metal-organic frameworks were characterized by various methods such as elemental analysis, ICP, fourier transform Infrared (FTIR) spectroscopy, thermal analysis (TG), X-ray powder diffraction, scanning electron microscopy (SEM), and energy dispersive X-ray spectroscopy (EDS). Further, their surface areas and porosity properties were determined. The prepared metal-organic frameworks were used as catalysts in vanillin conversion reactions of ferulic acid which selected as lignin model compound and lignin obtained from tea waste. Results were checked by high performance liquid chromatography, HPLC.