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Green solutions for clean water: Natural materials in contaminant detection and removal
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This review examines green and natural materials — including biosorbents, biopolymers, plant-based composites, and naturally occurring minerals — as sustainable alternatives to conventional water treatment technologies for detecting and removing emerging contaminants, evaluating biodegradability, cost-effectiveness, and performance against limitations of high cost and secondary pollution in traditional approaches.
The growing crisis of global water contamination, fueled by rapid industrialization, urban development, and intensified agriculture, has created an urgent need for sustainable, efficient, and environmentally friendly water treatment technologies. Conventional treatment approaches often fall short due to high operational costs, potential secondary pollution, and limited effectiveness against emerging pollutants. In response, green and natural materials have emerged as attractive alternatives for both contaminant removal and water quality monitoring, offering advantages such as biodegradability, ecological safety, cost-efficiency, and wide availability. This review provides a detailed overview of recent advancements in utilizing plant-based adsorbents, agricultural and industrial bio-wastes, natural polymers, clays, algae, microbial biomass, and eco-friendly nanomaterials for water purification. It explores key removal strategies including adsorption, photocatalytic degradation, membrane filtration, bio-based coagulation-flocculation, and bioremediation, demonstrating their effectiveness in targeting heavy metals, organic pollutants, biological contaminants, microplastics, and newly recognized environmental toxins. Furthermore, the integration of these natural materials into portable, low-cost sensing technologies—such as colorimetric, electrochemical, and fluorescent biosensors—is examined, offering innovative tools for real-time contaminant detection. The review also highlights emerging hybrid systems that combine green nanomaterials with biochar, biopolymers, and metal-based nanoparticles to enhance contaminant removal and multifunctional performance. Key practical considerations, including scalability, material uniformity, environmental impacts, biodegradability, and regulatory challenges, are addressed. A life cycle assessment (LCA) perspective is incorporated to compare the sustainability of these green alternatives with conventional materials. The article concludes by outlining future research opportunities focused on hybrid technologies, smart sensing integration, and circular economy frameworks to support scalable, sustainable, and decentralized water purification solutions.
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This review explores how natural and bio-based polymers can be used to remove a range of emerging pollutants from water, including microplastics, pharmaceuticals, and pesticides. It highlights natural materials as sustainable, cost-effective alternatives to synthetic adsorbents and aligns with green chemistry principles. The work is relevant to microplastics in that it frames them as part of a broader emerging contaminant problem and explores biopolymer-based solutions for water purification.
Sustainable Innovations in Green Nanomaterials for Contaminated Water Management and Remediation
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This review paper summarizes research on "green" nanomaterials, made from plant or microbial sources, for removing contaminants like microplastics, pharmaceuticals and heavy metals from water. It describes methods used to remove these pollutants and discusses challenges around cost, scalability and potential toxicity of the nanomaterials themselves.
Green Strategies for Removal of Emerging Contaminants from Aqueous System
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This review examines green strategies for removing emerging contaminants from aqueous systems, evaluating bioremediation, phytoremediation, and eco-friendly nanocomposite approaches for eliminating pharmaceuticals, endocrine disruptors, microplastics, and pesticides from water.
From invisible pollutants to visible impacts: Green solutions for contaminants of emerging concern
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Everyday pollutants like microplastics, drug residues, and pesticides are building up in our water and food chains, potentially disrupting hormones and harming health. This review summarizes existing research on "green" cleanup methods, like using plants and microbes, that remove these contaminants more affordably and sustainably than traditional treatments. Combining these approaches shows the most promise, though making them work at large scale remains a challenge.
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Scientists are using natural ingredients like plant extracts, algae, and fungi to create tiny, eco-friendly particles (nanoparticles) that can clean up pollution more safely than traditional chemical methods. This review paper summarizes existing research showing these "green" nanomaterials can help remove harmful substances like heavy metals, pesticides, drug residues, microplastics, and disease-causing germs from water, soil, and air. This matters because it points toward cleanup technologies that reduce our exposure to contaminants without introducing new toxic chemicals into the environment in the process.
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