Nanomaterials Across the Periodic Table as the Promising Agents for the Remediation of Dye-Contaminated Water: A Review

Availability and supply of drinking water have become a challenge for the Government and the people alike. Contamination of water sources adds to the misery. The dyes present in the effluents contribute to water pollution to a large extent. Some of the methods employed to eliminate these dyes from polluted water are such as oxidative removal with oxidizing agents, application of UV and visible radiation, adsorption, distillation, membrane filtration, chemical precipitation, solvent extraction ion exchange, reverse osmosis, and bioremediation. The nanomaterials have not only helped to overcome the limitations of these methods but also strengthened our war with pollutants to a great extent. The nanomaterials have found their applications either as adsorbents or catalysts (or photocatalysts) for the treatment of wastewater to eliminate dyes. This exhaustive literature review explores the synthesis, properties, applications, and efficiency of different nanomaterials and highlights the superiority of nanotechnological approaches for the remediation of dyes over conventional materials. There is a big list of metal-based nanomaterials engaged in the elimination of dyes from wastewater. These can be classified on the basis of various metals belonging to s-, p-, d-, and f-blocks of the modern periodic table.