Nanoremediation technologies for sustainable remediation of contaminated environments: Recent advances and challenges

Abstract

A major and growing concern within society is the lack of innovative and effective solutions to mitigate the challenge of environmental pollution. Uncontrolled release of pollutants into the environment as a result of urbanisation and industrialisation is a staggering problem of global concern. Although, the eco-toxicity of nanotechnology is still an issue of debate, however, nanoremediation is a promising emerging technology to tackle environmental contamination, especially dealing with recalcitrant contaminants. Nanoremediation represents an innovative approach for safe and sustainable remediation of persistent organic compounds such as pesticides, chlorinated solvents, brominated or halogenated chemicals, perfluoroalkyl and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS), and heavy metals. This comprehensive review article provides a critical outlook on the recent advances and future perspectives of nanoremediation technologies such as photocatalysis, nano-sensing etc., applied for environmental decontamination. Moreover, sustainability assessment of nanoremediation technologies was taken into consideration for tackling legacy contamination

Recent Advances in Chemical Sensors for Soil Analysis: A Review

“…Among other sensing technologies, nanomaterial-based sensors have been employed for sustainable management of agricultural soil, for the detection and quantification of various hazardous pollutants, and in applications for other important issues, such as pollutant remediation, nutrient bioavailability, and metallic immobilization. All this is discussed in detail in recent reviews [132,133]. The recent trends and practical applications of nano-enabled sensors to directly measuring soil nutrients, macro-and microelements, pH, and pollutants [134], such as metals, organics (including pesticides and herbicides), inorganic ions, and others, are discussed.…”

Nano-biofortification of different crops to immune against COVID-19: A review

“…Although, the engineered NPs could be used in remediation the polluted soil, water and air environments, the excess amounts of these NPs might cause serious hazards for the ecosystem and should be removed by proper remediation tools. This means NPs is double-edged sword ( Srivastav et al, 2018 , Zhang et al, 2019 , Romeh and Saber, 2020 , Gong et al, 2021 , Ganie et al, 2021 ). Common case studies are published about removing many heavy metals using NPs from contaminated media (i.e., water, soil and sediments) such as arsenic ( Alka et al, 2021 , Maity et al, 2021 ), cadmium ( Gong et al, 2021 ), chromium ( Azeez et al, 2021 ), copper ( Yin et al, 2020 ), lead ( Lian et al, 2021 ), mercury ( Kumari et al, 2020 ), and zinc ( Fajardo et al, 2020 ).…”

Recent Advances of Nanoremediation Technologies for Soil and Groundwater Remediation: A Review

“…Studies conducted to evaluate nanoremediation technologies are mostly bench-scale with few field-scale applications [2]. The main advantages of using nanoremediation for soil and groundwater remediation, especially for extensive site cleaning, are reduced cost and cleanup time, complete degradation of some contaminants without the need for the disposal of polluted soil and without the need to transfer the soil or pump groundwater [14,15].…”

“…Savolainen et al [26] stated that the fundamental elements of risk assessment are likely to remain and will continue to include the elements designed for other chemicals and particles, notably (1) hazard identification, (2) hazard characterization, (3) exposure assessment, and (4) risk characterization, which are the four steps of the risk assessment process [26]. However, the environmental effects of those NPs are still unclear and need more investigation to understand the environmental fate and toxicity of NPs as these issues are crucial for environmental protection practice [15,27].…”