Environmental & Analytical Toxicology

Nanomaterials as Sorbents to Remove Heavy Metal Ions in Wastewater Treatment

Abstract

Xiangtao Wang,Yifei Guo*,Li Yang,Meihua Han,Jing Zhao,Xiaoliang Cheng

Wastewater containing heavy metal ions is considered as the serious environmental problem in human society. Adsorption as the widely used method plays an important role in wastewater treatment, which is based on the physical interaction between metal ions and sorbents. With the development of nanotechnology, nanomaterials are used as the sorbents in wastewater treatment; several researches have proved that nanomaterials are the effective sorbents for the removal of heavy metal ions from wastewater due to their unique structure properties. Three kinds of nanomaterials are presented in this paper, including nanocarbon materials, nanometal particles, and polymer-supported nanoparticles.For heavy metal ions, all these nanomaterials show high selectivities and adsorption capacities. Besides, the adsorption isotherm model and adsorption kinetics are introduced briefly to understand the adsorption procedure.