Function of nanomaterials in the treatment of emerging pollutants in wastewater

Abstract Freshwater accessibility has grown to be a serious global challenge. The naturally occurring freshwater reserves are contaminated by the increased demographic, industrialization, and climatic changes. The health, environment, economy, and daily life are all extremely harmed by water pollution. Emergent pollutants including microplastics, antibiotics, hormones, unregulated medicines, nano-based materials, endocrine disruptors, pesticides, and so on are detrimental to human health and the environment. The development of wastewater treatment methods that are quick, feasible, low-cost, efficient, and sustainable is a problem posed by the emergence of new pollutants in the water. The shortcomings of current traditional treatment methods can be reduced with nanotechnology's intervention as it can remediate the contaminants commonly found in traces within complex organic mineral compounds. Based on the types of pollutants and required level of treatment efficiency, several nanomaterials such as carbon nanotubes, nanocomposites, nano-sorbents, graphene, nanomembranes, nanofibers, and nano-catalysts and so on are employed for wastewater treatment. Nanomaterials have unique physcio-chemical properties like shape, size and structure, surface morphology, crystallinity, and so on. These special qualities make them ideal substitutes for wastewater cleanup, purification, and contamination detection using pollutant-specific nanosensors and detectors. This chapter covers the type of nanomaterials and nanotechnologies useful in wastewater treatment to remediate emerging pollutants of concern. It also discusses the toxicity associated with nanotechnology and its environmental concern. Further the recent trends of large-scale clean-up of wastewater using nanotechnology and the challenges and future perspective associated with it are discussed.