Nanomaterials for sustainable remediation of chemical contaminants in water and soil

Abstract

Rapid growth in population, industry, urbanization and intensive agriculture have led to soil and water pollution by various contaminants. Nanoremediation has become one of the most successful emerging technologies for cleaning up soil and water contaminants due to the high reactivity of nanomaterials (NMs). Numerous publications are available on the use of NMs for removing contaminants, and the efficiencies are often improved by modifications of NMs with polymers, clay minerals, zeolites, activated carbon, and biochar. This paper critically reviews the current state-of-the-art NMs used for sustainable soil and water remediation, focusing on their applications in novel remedial approaches, such as adsorption/filtration, catalysis, photodegradation, electro-nanoremediation, and nano-bioremediation. Insights into process performances, modes of deployment, potential environmental risks and their management, and the consequent societal and economic implications of using NMs for soil and water remediation indicate that widespread acceptance of nanoremediation technologies requires not only a substantial advancement of the underpinning science and engineering aspects themselves, but also practical demonstrations of the effectiveness of already recognized approaches at real world in-situ conditions. New research involving green nanotechnology, nano-bioremediation, electro-nanoremediation, risk assessment of NMs, and outreach activities are needed to achieve successful applications of nanoremediation at regional and global scales.

Graphical abstract

KEYWORDS:

• Environmental protection
• green and sustainable remediation
• sustainable development goals
• soil remediation
• soil pollution
• wastewater treatment

Contributions

RM, BS and YSO conceptualized the work. RM and BS prepared the first draft, and revised the manuscript. All authors provided input on sections in later drafts and edited the manuscript.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Additional information

Funding

This work was carried out with support from Lancaster Environment Centre Project, and Cooperative Research Program for Agriculture Science and Technology Development (Project No. PJ01475801), Rural Development Administration, Republic of Korea, National Research Foundation of Korea (NRF) (NRF-2015R1A2A2A11001432), and NRF Germany-Korea Partnership Program (GEnKO Program) (2018–2020). This work was also supported in part by the Queensland node of the Australian National Fabrication Facility (ANFF), a company established under the National Collaborative Research Infrastructure Strategy to provide nano and microfabrication facilities for Australia’s researchers.