ABSTRACT
Bionanocomposites (BNC) are considered as a 21st-century emerging group of nanostructured hybrid materials designed from natural biodegradable polymers and organic/inorganic fillers having dimensions in the nanorange. This chapter explores the new avenues of BNC hybrid materials where they may be exploited to address certain unanswered issues that are pertaining to environmental remediation, that is, water treatment via removing pollutants from water bodies. The primary amino groups of chitosan (CS) are easily functionalized with different organic ligands, like graphene oxide (GO) and ethylenediaminetetraacetic acid (EDTA), to improve its adsorption capacity. EDTA is considered as a good candidate for the adsorption of heavy metals via chelation and can be functionalized with other materials such as GO and CS. Tong established a facile, green pathway to prepare composite materials containing magnetic nanoparticles and cellulose by the one-step co-precipitation method using a sodium hydroxide–thiourea-urea aqueous solution for cellulose dissolution.
