Sustainable environment through using porous materials: A review on wastewater treatment

Abstract

Porous materials play an important role in creating a sustainable environment by improving wastewater treatment's efficacy. Porous materials, including adsorbents or ion exchangers, catalysts, metal–organic frameworks, composites, carbon materials, and membranes, have widespread applications in treating wastewater and air pollution. This review examines recent developments in porous materials, focusing on their effectiveness for different wastewater pollutants. Specifically, they can treat a wide range of water contaminants, and many remove over 95% of targeted contaminants. Recent advancements include a wider range of adsorption options, heterogeneous catalysis, a new UV/H2O2 procedure, ion exchange, Fenton oxidation, membrane activities, ozonation, membrane bioreactor, electrochemical treatment, wet air oxidation, and a carbon capture methodology utilizing various porous materials. A particular focus for innovative research is on developing technologies to synthesize porous materials and assess their performance in removing various pollutants from wastewater at varying experimental conditions. Porous materials can be essential in designing wastewater treatment systems to address the critical environmental issues of water stress and safe drinking water worldwide.

Recent Advances in Porous Bio-Polymer Composites for the Remediation of Organic Pollutants

“…Since wastewater treatment is a running process, choosing the optimal membrane for wastewater treatment is difficult and depends on many variables. The nature of pollutants, membrane porosity, membrane manufacturing methods, and the separation process are among the effective variables in preparing and choosing the right membrane [ 23 ]. In addition to the mentioned variables, the high costs of preparing and restructuring the membrane should also be considered [ 9 ].…”

“…Among the disadvantages of adsorbents are the dependence of their performance on pollutant concentration, the pH of the environment, and the solution temperature. It is difficult to prepare adsorbents that have their maximum performance in normal environmental conditions [ 23 ]. Other disadvantages of adsorbents include their lack of selectivity and the difficulty of separating them from the solution [ 9 ].…”

“…Asymmetric membranes, which are the most accessible membranes, consist of two layers: a thin upper layer with selective permeability and a porous layer below that in turn mechanically strengthens the membrane. The upper layer provides selective flux in comparison with the symmetric membrane by changing the preparation parameters (Figure 1) [23]. and cellulose.…”

“…Porous composites have long been of interest, but the ability to control performance and create engineered porous materials has made them more attractive to researchers than in the past [ 4 , 21 ]. Engineered porous materials aid in water purification due to their pore size distribution, internal and external active sites, specific surface area, reusability, various functional groups and thus selectivity, stability in various conditions, electrostatic properties, and successful chemisorption through different techniques such as adsorption, membranes, degradation, or oxidation [ 22 , 23 ]. Porous materials are divided into two general categories based on their structure and chemical composition.…”

“…Creating porous materials using biopolymers can reduce greenhouse gas emissions and prevent secondary pollution [ 26 ]. Also, these sustainable materials achieve the goals of green chemistry in the field of reducing hazardous substances in chemical reactions [ 23 ].…”