Nanotechnology in
wastewater treatment
About 70% of the earth’s surface is covered with water.
Saline water makes about 97.5% of the total water,
2.5% is regarded as fresh water
- 68.9% of water is in the form of ice, permanent snow, and glaciers.
-ground water accounts for 30.8% of fresh water (0.3% is easily accessible)
Rapid increase in population, expanding industrialization, urbanization and extensive
agriculture practices are causing continuous deterioration of quality water resources, which is
a serious matter of global concern.
1.2 billion populations do not have access to safe drinking water, 2.6 billion people struggle to
fulfil basic sanitation, millions of people have lost their lives from diseases communicated
through unsafe and polluted water.
Diarrhea caused by the consumption of contaminated water takes the life of approximately 1.8
million children every year
Physicochemical or conventional and biological methods to address wastewater treatment
include coagulation, flocculation, precipitation, adsorption, ion-exchange, membrane
separation, and aerobic or anaerobic oxidation methods.
However, wastewater treatment through these physicochemical methods often involve
chemicals (such as chlorine compounds, ammonia, permanganate, alum, sodium hydroxide,
hydrochloric acid, ozone, and ferric salts) and energetically and operationally intensive
mechanical methods, and thus requires engineering expertise and infrastructure.
Additionally, it has been observed that conventional techniques are not efficient enough to
remove toxins, phosphorous, nitrogen, heavy metals completely from contaminated
wastewater.
Although all these factors rendered them expensive and time consuming, all of them decrease
the level of various pollutants to some extent and have their own advantages and
disadvantages
Wastewater contains several dangerous and harmful materials which could be characterized
by their physical appearance, chemical composition, and loads of microorganisms.
The major sources of wastewater are domestic wastewater, agricultural waste, industrial
waste, and commercial waste.
Almost all the major sources need good quality water, particularly industries, but in return a
huge volume of contaminated and polluted water is generated and streamed in large water
bodies, making them polluted
Wastewater is a complex matrix composed of
99.9% of water and the remaining 0.1%
includes suspended solids (350–1200 mg/L)
chemical oxygen demand of 250–1000 mg/L,
several microorganisms (up to 109
number/mL), heavy metals, micro-pollutants
and nutrients.
Almost, 63% of phosphate compounds have
been found to be associated as a soluble
fraction in wastewater
Wastewater Treatment
A process of separation of pollutants or contaminants from wastewater by taking aid of physical or
chemical processes before releasing them in the environment is known as wastewater treatment.
The aim of wastewater treatment is not only to eradicate contaminants and pollutants below the
maximum allowed limit, but also to recover micronutrients and water to avoid environmental and human
health threats.
The biological wastewater treatment- aerobic processes; uses oxygen to break down organic
contaminants and other pollutants like nitrogen and phosphorous.
The anaerobic treatment involves anaerobic bacteria that transforms the organic matter present in the
wastewater into biogas, which contains large amounts of methane gas and carbon dioxide.
The anaerobic treatment is preferred when the dissolved organic concentrations of untreated wastewater
are high.
The number of stages required to treat wastewater greatly depends on the extent of pollutant to be
eliminated and the mechanism of elimination
Methods: Preliminary treatment is the first step towards wastewater treatment, which removes large
and/or heavy debris. Preliminary treatment typically takes place in two stages: screening followed by grit
removal.
The screening process removes large floating debris such as rags that account for ~60% of the debris,
paper ~25% and plastics ~5%, by using screens.
Grit removal is the immediate step followed by screening which chiefly removes inorganic particles like
gravel, sand and other heavy particulate matters by settling in grit channels.
After preliminary treatment, the effluent goes to primary treatment, which predominantly separates the
suspended solids via a sedimentation process.
Sedimentation takes place in tanks where the effluent is allowed to stay for several hours so that the
suspended solids either get settled down or form smut on the top, which is skimmed from the top, and
sludge is removed.
Primary treatment removes around 40% of biological oxygen demand (BOD), about 80–90% of
suspended solids, and around 55% of fecal coliforms
The secondary treatment involves the processing of activated sludge from primary treated water via
oxidation ditches, trickling filters or bio-filters, and rotating biological contactors.
To oxidize these organic contaminants, the aid of millions of actively growing microorganisms (single
cell), particularly bacteria and protozoa, is taken and they remove organic contaminants from
wastewater as a result of their natural metabolic activity.
Along with the removal of organic contaminants, secondary treatment also removes some
micronutrients such as nitrogen and phosphorous from sewage by the process of nitrification and luxury
cell uptake.
These micronutrients are usually taken up by algae and fungi for their growth through the process of
eutrophication, resulting in diminution of the oxygen level of the water body to which the treated water
is discharged.
Tertiary treatment involves the removal of residual organic, inorganic matter and microorganisms from
the effluent of secondary treatment by treatment with chlorine, chlorine dioxide, sodium hypochlorite
and chloramines, UV (ultra-violet) or ozone radiation before releasing in the environment to make sure
that the treated sewage is safe enough to be released
Drawbacks of conventional techniques
Many of the existing wastewater treatment technologies have limited intrinsic capabilities.
For example, reverse osmosis membranes cannot be used for the recovery of wastewater
containing a high concentration of salinity.
The use of adsorbers is restricted to specific compounds with particular functional
groups/structures. Most ion exchange surfaces are specific to certain chemicals.
Some of the environmental implications of the current processes are the need for high energy
and chemical use and the production of large volumes of waste.
In addition, conventional water decontamination methods lack selectivity towards
contaminants.
They cannot remove one compound over another, suggesting inefficiency and susceptibility to
interference during operation
Nanotechnology in Wastewater Treatment
Nanotechnology has become one of the most explored technologies of the 21st century. Unique
properties of nanomaterials include:
High surface to volume ratio
Small size
Well-organized structure
Competence of filtration
These properties help the removal of heavy metals from polluted wastewater. Based on the type
of nanomaterial, wastewater treatment is divided into three main groups:
Nanocatalysts
Nano adsorbents
Nanomembranes
Adsorption
Adsorption is one of the most widely used treatment methods to remove organic and inorganic
contaminants in water.
An adsorption process can be defined as the process in which gaseous or liquid solutes are attracted and
accumulated on the adsorbent, which is usually a solid molecule, while absorption usually involves
permeation of a substance or dissolution in a liquid or solid. The combination of adsorption and
absorption is called sorption.
The performance of an adsorption process depends
on the percentage removal of contaminants from
water and is closely related to the adsorption
capacity of the adsorbent used.
The adsorption capacity of an adsorbent depends
mainly on the surface characteristics (specific
surface area), the active sites available on the
surface, and the affinity towards the contaminants
Efficiency of conventional adsorbents is usually limited by the surface area or active sites,
the lack of selectivity, and the adsorption kinetics.
The ideal absorbent is small, has a large surface area, great catalytic potential, and high
reactivity.
Nano-adsorbents offer significant improvement with their extremely high specific surface
area and associated sorption sites, short intraparticle diffusion distance, and tunable pore size
and surface chemistry
Nano-adsorbents are classified based on their adsorption process, i.e., metallic nanoparticle,
magnetic nanoparticles, nanostructured mixed oxides, and metallic oxide nanoparticles.
Nanoporous-activated carbon
Carbon-based adsorbents are synthesized from biomaterials such as sawdust, crab shells, bagasse,
olive pit waste, and activated carbon cloth. All these adsorbents present good adsorption capacity in
the removal of contaminants present in wastewater.
However, the efficiency still needs to be higher. Therefore, the adsorption capacity of this activated
carbon can be increased by increasing the specific surface area or reducing the particle size.
In other words, this activated carbon can be modified into nanoporous activated carbon by
functionalization to provide high pollutant removal efficiency
Due to their large specific surface area along with their efficient active sites, carbon-based
nanomaterials prove to be essential adsorbents.
Carbon nanostructures are widely used as nanoadsorbents for wastewater treatment owing to their
abundant availability, cost-effectiveness, high chemical and thermal stabilities, high active surface
areas, excellent adsorption capacities, and environmental friendly nature.
Carbon nanotubes (CNTs)
Researchers are showing great interest towards CNTs because of their exceptional properties,
such as their mechanical flexibility, high specific surface areas, and large pore volumes and
that is why CNTs are extensively being exploited in wastewater treatment.
As adsorbents, these CNTs have shown superior performance over other adsorbents attributed
to tunable surface chemistry, which permits surface modifications, a chemically inert nature,
hollow structure, high specific surface area, light mass density, high porosity and strong
interaction with pollutants
Carbon nanotubes (CNTs) have a more efficient adsorption capacity than activated carbon for
many organic pollutants.
This extraordinary adsorption capacity is mainly due to their large surface area and the various
interactions of CNTs with the contaminants. The effective surface area for adsorption on
particular CNTs exists on their outer surfaces.
In solution, CNTs form loose aggregates due to the hydrophobic character of the graphitic
surface, which reduces the effective surface area. However, CNTs aggregates have interstitial
spaces and channels that are considered high sorption areas for organic molecules.
According to their structure, CNTs present two distinct forms: single-walled carbon nanotube
(SWNT) (single layer of graphene sheets) and multi-walled carbon nanotube (MWNT)
(multiple layers of graphene sheets).
CNTs efficiently adsorb numerous substances due to different contaminant-CNT interactions,
including hydrophobic effect, Π-Π interactions, covalent bonds, H-bonds, and electrostatic
forces
The p-electron-rich surface of CNTs allows p-p interactions with organic molecules containing double
bonds between carbons, such as polar aromatic molecules.
Individual carbon nanotubes (10–100) also form pores. These pores act as mesopores, or their larger size
provides the CNTs structure with a larger surface area, which can concentrate microbes (bacteria,
parasites, and viruses) with high affinity
CNTs have also shown exceptionally high sorption
capacity and efficiency for Cd(II), Cr(VI), and Pb(II)
present in water.
MWCNTs were employed for Ni(II) adsorption from
an aqueous solution.
oxidized MWCNTs are promising materials for the
preconcentration and solidification of heavy metal
ions.
CNTs- removal of divalent metal ions [Cd(II), Cu(II),
Ni(II), Pb(II), Zn(II)] from aqueous solution
Metal based Nanoadsorbents:
Nanometals and their oxides such as Fe3O4, TiO2, MnO2, MgO, ZnO and CdO are
extensively used to remove heavy metals, ions and dyes from wastewater.
Nanometal oxides are considered more effective adsorbent as compared to activated carbon
when removal of heavy metals and radioactive metals are concerned.
Additionally, their small size and large surface area offers a small intraparticle diffusion
distance which can be compressed without altering their surface area.
The sorption process is mainly governed by the complexation between dissolved metals and
the oxygen in metal oxides
Membranes process
Membranes, generally, are employed in the removal of contaminants from water and are classified as a
physical process that works by the movement of particles based on different concentration levels or
through a difference in particle size, such as metals, bacteria or viruses.
The overall performance of a membrane is determined by two critical factors: selectivity and membrane
permeability.
A membrane with higher permeability decreases the amount of membrane area needed to treat water,
ultimately leading to a decrease in the capital cost of the membrane.
Similarly, a membrane with higher selectivity provides a purer product. Increased permeability and
selectivity lead to lower energy consumption, essential for this pressure-driven process.
One of the main obstacles to the long-term stability of membranes is biofouling. developing specialty
anti-biofouling is crucial in water and wastewater treatment membrane technology.
Hydrophilic membranes have been developed to alleviate surface biofouling; however, more is needed
to control long-term biofouling due to bacteria's continuous bioadsorption, growth, and regeneration on
a polymeric membrane.
Although nanomaterials have shown promise for removing the microbial load from wastewater,
the degree of removal of microorganisms depends mainly on the nature of the NPs.
In general, nanomaterials act on microorganisms to remove them by various strategies: damaging
microbial cell membranes by direct contact (e.g., chitosan NPs), discharging toxic metal ions
(e.g., Ag+), and generating ROS (e.g.,TiO2).
However, despite their high antibacterial activity, problems such as the release of (heavy) metal
ions that the membranes cannot reject and the leaching of nanomaterials from the antibacterial
membrane will potentially pose a risk to the aquatic ecosystem due to the potential toxicity of
some nanomaterials.
These considerations should be taken into account in antibacterial modifications using
multifunctional nanomaterials.
Nanomaterials are employed for their potential in microbial load control and disinfection.
Specifically, nanofilters and nanomembranes stand out for their properties in drinking water
production.
Nanofilters, compared to conventional technologies, require less pressure, while TiO 2-modified
filtration membranes produce high-quality water with higher flux.
Other nanomaterials that stand out for their removal of bacteria, toxins, and organic contaminants
involved in water purification are magnesium aluminum silicate clays and nanoporous polymers.
Inorganic nanoparticles improve the thermal and mechanical stability of polymeric membranes,
reducing the negative impact of compaction.
These processes have shown high potential in desalination and can be combined with other
technologies, such as disinfection.
