Nanostructure materials for wastewater treatment

Abstract

Water is one of the most important natural supplies on the earth, and the world’s water resources are contaminated day by day. The discharge of a large amount of wastewater which contains different contaminants from different industries such as plastic, leather, textile, pulp, food processing, pharmaceuticals, pesticides, cosmetics, detergents, personal care products, paper industries, etc., to the aquatic system creates the significant risks to the water environment. These toxic substances and nondegradable compounds in wastewater generally have a synthetic origin and a complicated large chemical structure. So, nowadays the treatment of wastewater remains the most important topic worldwide to respond to increasing requirements of clean water in spite of some technological progress and breakthroughs. Therefore developing new, innovative, and also low-cost wastewater treatment techniques is important. Nanotechnology and nanomaterials studies have been considered more important during the last decade. These days, the use of nanomaterials in water treatment has become increasingly widespread and gaining importance due to their unique size, shape, and special chemical and physical characteristics. Various forms of nanomaterials such as metal oxides, metal nanoparticles, carbon nanostructures, quantum dots, zeolite, etc., have been applied in the purification of wastewater technologies using adsorption, electrochemical, photocatalysis, nanofiltration, nanomembrane filtration, and remediation methods to the removal of various pollutants. In this chapter, we have focused on the literature of application of nanomaterials for wastewater treatment in the past 5 years. The superiorities, current limitations, disadvantages, and future trends in the development of nanomaterial-based treatment have also been mentioned. © 2024 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.