Nanomaterial Innovations for Environmental Health: Advancing Wastewater Treatment Technologies

The use of nanomaterials for water disinfection has gained a lot of attention nowadays as they can mitigate the limitations and drawbacks of conventional chemical and physical water disinfectants. Due to their excellent thermal and physical stability, high specific surface area, and excellent catalysis ability, nanomaterials hold the topmost position in water disinfection. Other most striking features of nanomaterials are recyclability and reusability. Nanomaterials effectively kill or inactivate the harmful pathogenic microbial cells present in water by direct interaction or via the production of reactive oxygen species without generating any harmful disinfectant byproducts, unlike conventional chemical disinfectants. Some naturally occurring antimicrobial substances, such as chitosan and some peptides, are engineered to nanomaterials, which exhibit certain antimicrobial properties. Engineered carbon and carbon derivatives such as carbon nanotubes, fullerenes, graphene, and graphene oxide exhibit high antimicrobial activity against fungi, bacteria, and viruses. Some photoactive nanomaterials show enhancement in antimicrobial activity due to the combined effect of light and materials. Such materials include some metals and metal oxides photocatalytic materials along with their composites, which show an effective antimicrobial activity with irradiation of specific wavelengths of light. Engineering of these nanocomposites has gained much attention nowadays as they exhibit higher antimicrobial activity than nanomaterials.