Chapter 13 - Aerogels in the environment protection

Abstract

Environmental pollution emanating from rapid industrialization has been considered a worldwide concern in recent years. Therefore, the scientific community is developing various kinds of new materials and techniques to minimize environmental problems. In this regard, aerogels have drawn much interest for the scientific community because of its extraordinary properties for various advanced applications, such as catalytic and energy storage devices. In this book chapter, fundamental synthesis method for preparing aerogel and its composites with metal and metal oxide has been reviewed. Moreover, properties of these aerogels can be further improved with graphene and its derivatives. Therefore, the composites of metal oxides and other inorganic materials with graphene, reduced graphene oxide, and graphene oxide have been reviewed. Water pollution is a major concern for the various countries. Different methods such as chemical oxidation process, distillation, membrane filtration, absorption, and photocatalytic are in practice to treat wastewater. However, the photocatalytic process is being considered an economical and efficient method to remove water pollutants. Therefore, the role of aerogels to cure the environmental issue by photocatalyst technique was also studied. In short, aerogels found attractive to degrade the various detrimental dyes such as methylene blue, rhodamine B, methyl orange, and congo red, etc.