Nanotechnology-assisted treatment of pharmaceuticals contaminated water

ABSTRACT

The presence of pharmaceutical compounds in wastewater due to an increase in industrialization and urbanization is a serious health concern. The demand for diverse types of pharmaceutical compounds is expected to grow as there is continuous improvement in the global human health standards. Discharge of domestic pharmaceutical personal care products and hospital waste has aggravated the burden on wastewater management. Further, the pharmaceutical water is toxic not only to the aquatic organism but also to terrestrial animals coming in contact directly or indirectly. The pharmaceutical wastes can be removed by adsorption and/or degradation approach. Nanoparticles (NPs), such as 2D layers materials, metal-organic frameworks (MOFs), and carbonaceous nanomaterials are proven to be more efficient for adsorption and/or degradation of pharmaceutical waste. In addition, inclusion of NPs to form various composites leads to improvement in the waste treatment efficacy to a greater extent. Overall, carbonaceous nanocomposites have advantage in the form of being produced from renewable resources and the nanocomposite material is biodegradable either completely or to a great extent. A comprehensive literature survey on the recent advancement of pharmaceutical wastewater is the focus of the present article.

GRAPHICAL ABSTRACT

Keywords:

• Pharmaceuticals
• wastewater treatment
• functionalized nanocomposites
• adsorption
• photocatalysis
• metal organic frameworks (MOF)

Acknowledgments

A.S. thanks Sri Guru Teg Bahadur Khalsa College, Sri Anandpur Sahib. NJthanks DAV College, Bathinda. R.K. thanks Maharaja Agrasen University. K.S. is grateful to DAV College, Sector 10, Chandigarh. P.G. sis thankful to DAVU management for continuous support to carry out research. RBthanks Nicholls State University. V.K. gratefully acknowledge Lovely Professional University, Jalandhar for their support.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Author contributions statement

Amandeep Saroa: conception, drafting of the paper,editing, final approval of manuscript. Amrit Singh: drafting of the paper, final approval of manuscript. Neha Jindal: drafting of the paper, final approval of manuscript. Raj Kumar: drafting of the paper, final approval of manuscript. Kulvinder Singh: drafting of the paper, final approval of manuscript. Praveen Guleria: drafting of the paper, final approval of manuscript. Raj Boopathy: conception, drafting of the paper, final approval of manuscript. Vineet Kumar: conception, drafting of the paper, editing, final approval of manuscript, revising it critically for intellectual content.All authors agree to be accountable for all aspects of the work and has final approval of the version submitted.

Data availability statement

Data sharing is not applicable to this article as no new data were created or analyzed in this study as it is a review manuscript.

Additional information

Funding

The author(s) reported there is no funding associated with the work featured in this article.