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Currently, due to the rapid growth of urbanization and industrialization in developing countries, a large volume of wastewater is produced from industries that contain chemicals generating high environmental risks affecting human health and the economy if not treated properly. Consequently, the development of a sustainable low-cost wastewater treatment approach has attracted more attention of policymakers and scientists. The present review highlights the recent applications of biochar in removing organic and inorganic pollutants present in industrial effluents. The recent modes of preparation, physicochemical properties and adsorption mechanisms of biochar in removing organic and inorganic industrial pollutants are also reviewed comprehensively. Biochar showed high adsorption of industrial dyes up to 80%. It also discusses the recent application and mechanism of biochar-supported photocatalytic materials for the degradation of organic contaminants in wastewater. We reviewed also the possible optimizations (such as the pyrolysis temperature, solution pH) allowing the increase of the adsorption capabilities of biochar leading to organic contaminants removal. Besides, increasing the pyrolysis temperature of the biochar was seen to lead to an increase in its surface area, while it decreases their amount of oxygen-containing functional groups, consequently leading to a decrease in the adsorption of metal (loid) ions present in the medium. Finally, the review suggests that more research should be carried out to optimize the main parameters involved in biochar production and its regeneration methods. Future efforts should be also carried out towards process engineering to improve its adsorption capacity to increase the economic benefits of its implementation.

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aThe first evidence for the synthesis of a uniform, adhesive polyethylene-FeOx (PE-FeOx) surface leading efficiently to bacterial inactivation is addressed in this study. PE was loaded with 0.04-0.08% Fe wt/wt PE after RF-plasma pretreatment was required to increase the active sites/polarity and roughness to adhere FeOx on PE. The repetitive bacterial inactivation proceeded in a stable way for several cycles. The oxidative radicals leading to bacterial inactivation under aerobic/anaerobic conditions were investigated by the use of appropriate scavengers. By X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS) and diffuse reflection spectroscopy (DRS) the changes on the PE-FeOx oxidation states and spectroscopic features during bacterial inactivation were monitored. The regeneration of the initial Fe-oxidation state and consequently of the initial Fe-oxidation state in the PE-FeOx was possible and followed by DRS. Inductive plasma coupled mass spectrometry (ICP-MS) indicated that only sub-ppb levels of Fe were released from the PE-FeOx surface within the reaction time.