15 - Application of nanocomposites in wastewater treatment

Abstract

Due to rapid modernization with industrial growth, drinking water is continuously polluted by various pollutants. The depletion in freshwater may be due to pollutants like hazardous chemicals, toxic metal ion, dyes, organic compounds, bacteria, viruses, etc. Decontamination by heavy metal ions and dyes is the most serious challenge for the water industry to produce pure water. A plethora of suitable materials has been reported to deplete the pollutants from water and produce safe water at low cost with high separation ability and recyclability. A variety of different methods like adsorption, membrane filtration, coagulation, oxidation–reduction, etc., have been used in water purification. Adsorption is the most significant method to treat contaminants in water. Recent reports on the purification of water involved the use of a nanotechnological approach. Nanocomposite-based adsorbents have emerged as one of the advanced tools to deplete the pollutants, in particular dyes and toxic metal ions from wastewater, due to characteristic features like affinity of metal ions, higher surface to volume ratio, smaller size, etc. This chapter summarizes the nanocomposite-based adsorbents for the effective removal of heavy metal ions and dyes from with special attention on the papers reported in last 5 years using selected examples.