Engineering of zeolitic imidazolate frameworks based on magnetic three-dimensional graphene as effective and reusable adsorbent to enhance the adsorption and removal of caffeine from tea samples.

As more and more adverse health effects of caffeine are being discovered, decaffeinated drinks are receiving increasing attention. In this work, a magnetic imidazole zeolite backbone compounded with three-dimensional graphene was successfully synthesized as a solid adsorbent using a layer-by-layer self-assembly technique, which can rapidly and effectively adsorb caffeine from tea. Meanwhile, the structure and properties of caffeine in tea were investigated by various physicochemical characterization tools. The analytical data showed that FeO@3DGA@ZIF-8 had a specific surface area of 162.9754 m/g and an adsorption capacity of up to 19.57 mg/g with a maximum adsorption rate of 96.55%, which could be maintained with good adsorption repeated utilization three times. The adsorption isotherm and the adsorption kinetic better fit with the Langmuir model and the preudo-second order kinetic model, respectively. Therefore, FeO@3DGA@ZIF-8 is a good magnetic adsorbent for the separation and the effective removal of caffeine from tea sample.