Abstract
Clean and safe water is a fundamental human need for multi-faceted development of society and a thriving economy. Brisk rises in populations, expanding industrialization, urbanization and extensive agriculture practices have resulted in the generation of wastewater which have not only made the water dirty or polluted, but also deadly. Millions of people die every year due to diseases communicated through consumption of water contaminated by deleterious pathogens. Although various methods for wastewater treatment have been explored in the last few decades but their use is restrained by many limitations including use of chemicals, formation of disinfection by-products (DBPs), time consumption and expensiveness. Nanotechnology, manipulation of matter at a molecular or an atomic level to craft new structures, devices and systems having superior electronic, optical, magnetic, conductive and mechanical properties, is emerging as a promising technology, which has demonstrated remarkable feats in various fields including wastewater treatment. Nanomaterials encompass a high surface to volume ratio, a high sensitivity and reactivity, a high adsorption capacity, and ease of functionalization which makes them suitable for application in wastewater treatment. In this article we have reviewed the techniques being developed for wastewater treatment using nanotechnology based on adsorption and biosorption, nanofiltration, photocatalysis, disinfection and sensing technology. Furthermore, this review also highlights the fate of the nanomaterials in wastewater treatment as well as risks associated with their use.
Highlights
For survival and development of living beings, many things are required, but no other things could be more important than water
Wastewater is a complex matrix composed of 99.9% of water and the remaining 0.1% includes suspended solids (350–1200 mg/L), organic compounds like body waste, dissolved biodegradable organics, inorganic solids, and particulate stuff with an chemical oxygen demand of 250–1000 mg/L, several microorganisms, heavy metals, micro-pollutants and nutrients
Both the materials were characterized and evaluated for batch sorption tests with single and a mixture of contaminants, and the results revealed that magnetic mesostructured silica NPs (MMSSNPs)-ph is more proficient for the adsorption of polyaromatic hydrocarbons (PAHCs) and aliphatic hydrocarbons (AHCs)
Summary
For survival and development of living beings, many things are required, but no other things could be more important than water. Around 1.2 billion populations do not have access to safe drinking water, 2.6 billion people struggle to fulfil basic sanitation, millions of people, children, have lost their lives from diseases communicated through unsafe and polluted water [6,7]. It has been observed that conventional techniques are not efficient enough to remove toxins, phosphorous, nitrogen, heavy metals completely from contaminated wastewater. All these factors rendered them expensive and time consuming, all of them decrease the level of various pollutants to some extent and have their own advantages and disadvantages [6,7,9,10]. Nanomaterials have been found to be effective in elimination of several pollutants from wastewater such as heavy metals, organic and inorganic solvents, color as well as biological toxins, and pathogens that cause diseases like cholera and typhoid [6]
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