Sustainable Fabrication of Large Surface Area Supported Catalyst for the Waste Water Remediation

Metallic nanoparticles intact or grafted within a support are emerging as recyclable, sustainable catalysts for the remediation of waste water contaminated with organic pollutants. In this chapter, the role and limitation of unsupported nanoparticles and the emergence of supported metallic nanoparticles toward the removal of Persistent Organic Pollutants (POPs) have been discussed. Though several findings have suggested that unsupported metallic nanoparticles exhibit high catalytic activity their real-time implementation toward large volume waste water remediation has been restricted by factors like agglomeration, compromised catalytic activity, toxicity, bio-augmentation at higher trophic levels, recyclability and metal precursor retrievability. As an alternative recently, nature inspired and nature derived large area supported catalysts with high surface area, stability, porosity, biocompatibility, recyclability, and retrievability due to their large area have been reported toward the sustainable remediation of water ecosystem contaminated by POPs. The discussion will be followed by the utilization of large area nature derived supported catalysts toward POPs degradation by various processes such as hydrogenation and advanced oxidation processes. Finally, the role of wide area and reductive potential of nature derived support allowing autogenic synthesis, hand mediated recyclability, and precursor retrievability have been emphasized. Overall analysis will bring attention to the adaptability and robust characteristics of the newly emerging, highly efficient catalysts with broad area support with huge potential toward the industrial scale remediation of waste water.