Nanomaterials for Remediation of Environmental Pollutants

Table 1

Side effects of using traditional processes for pollutant removal.

Pollutant removal method	Side effect	Reference
Biological processes	(i) Cannot treat toxic or refractory organic pollutants and have limitations.	[49]
Zeolite adsorption	(i) They might be highly hydrophilic on template removal because of their high surface silanol density, leading to low adsorption for hydrophobic pollutants.	[50]
Photocatalysis	(i) Economic constraints for the high level of mineralization. Postreaction products of photocatalysis could still remain toxic.	[51, 52]
	(ii) Photo corrosion is a typical drawback, postseparation inorganic catalysts. Semiconductor photocatalysts are unstable under light irradiation.
Electro kinetics	(i) There might be ionic motion, crystallization of metal salts, and dehydration which prevented removal of inorganic pollutants.	[53]
Electrochemical advanced oxidation processes	(i) High cost, high energy consumption for complete mineralization of pollutant.	[49]
Advanced oxidation process	(i) Considerably affected by pollutant nature, type, and concentration of oxidants and catalyst, reactor configuration.	[54, 55]
	(ii) Release toxic and less biodegradable by-products in extreme cases.
Electrocoagulation	(i) Myriad of designs for reactor formation.	[56]
Ozonation	(i) Difficult mineralization of pollutants due to the presence of hydroxyl ion scavengers.	[43]
Classical Fenton process	(i) Unsafe storage, transportation, and handling of hydrogen peroxide for large treatments.	[57]