ABSTRACT
Water pollution is a problem of mammoth proportions, and there is no single technique which can effectively combat this threat. Treatment of wastewater has been a subject of intense research as we tread through the 21st century. Indiscriminate use of toxic pesticides, fertilizers in farms, and chemicals in various industries lead to inadvertent water pollution by surface runoff. However, unscrupulous industries disposing their waste in water bodies in isolated pockets around the globe are the greater concern. This is resulting in a crisis, as potable water is a precious commodity and is absolutely essential for sustaining life on earth. To combat this problem, efficient and inexpensive methods have to be developed to treat wastewater and render it reusable. In this chapter an overview of the use of nanomaterials for water remediation is discussed. Nanomaterials have dimensions in the range of 10−9 m, which result in very high surface area as well as surface reactivity. These properties can be explored for the enhancement of various established water remediation processes, particularly photocatalysis, adsorption, membrane filtration, and ion exchange techniques. Various nanocatalysts, nanosorbents, nanozeolites, nanodendrimers, and nanostructured catalytic membrane materials are discussed in this chapter and their effects on various water remediation techniques are elucidated.
