Many of the products and drugs used commonly contain chemical components which may persist through sewage treatment works (STW) and eventually enter the aquatic environment as parent compounds, ...metabolites, or transformation products. Pharmaceuticals and personal care products (PPCPs) and other emerging contaminants (ECs) have been detected in waters (typically ng/L) as well as more recently bound to sediment and plastic particles (typically ng/g). Despite significant advancement of knowledge since the late 1990s, the fate of these contaminants/transformation products once introduced into the aquatic environment remains relatively unresolved.
This review provides a unique focus on the fate of seven major groups of PPCPs/ECs in the aquatic environment, which is frequently not found in similar works which are often compound or topic-specific and limited in background knowledge. Key findings include: a) some replacements for regulation precluded/banned chemicals may be similarly persistent in the environment as those they replace, b) the adsorption of potentially bioactive chemicals to micro- and nanoplastics is a significant topic with risks to aquatic organisms potentially greater than previously thought, and c) micro-/nanoplastics are likely to remain of significant concern for centuries after regulatory limitations on their use become active due to the slow degradation of macro-plastics into smaller components.
An interdisciplinary perspective on recent advances in the field is presented here in a unique way which highlights both the principle science and direction of research needed to elucidate the fate and transport patterns of aquatic PPCPs/ECs. Unlike similar reviews, which are often topic-specific, here we aim to present an overarching review of the field with focus on the occurrence, transformation and fate of emerging contaminants. Environmental presence of seven major classes of contaminants (analygesics, antibiotics, antineoplastics, beta-blockers, perfluorinated compounds, personal care products and plasticisers), factors affecting contaminant fate, association with plastic micro-/nanoparticles and photochemical transformation are comprehensively evaluated.
Overview of the sources, environmental fate and elimination/transformation of pharmaceuticals, personal care products and other emerging contaminants in the aquatic environment. Display omitted
•Micro-/nanoplastic particles may bind and transport aquatic contaminants.•Photodegradation may lead to transformation products with higher reported toxicity.•Some banned chemical replacements may be similarly persistent in the environment.•Regulation will have little/no effect on the occurrence of plastic microparticles.
Pollution problems are increasingly becoming e a priority issue from both scientific and technological points of view. The dispersion and frequency of pollutants in the environment are on the rise, ...leading to the emergence have been increasing, including of a new class of contaminants that not only impact the environment but also pose risks to people’s health. Therefore, developing new methods for identifying and quantifying these pollutants classified as emerging contaminants is imperative. These methods enable regulatory actions that effectively minimize their adverse effects to take steps to regulate and reduce their impact. On the other hand, these new contaminants represent a challenge for current technologies to be adapted to control and remove emerging contaminants and involve innovative, eco-friendly, and sustainable remediation technologies. There is a vast amount of information collected in this review on emerging pollutants, comparing the identification and quantification methods, the technologies applied for their control and remediation, and the policies and regulations necessary for their operation and application. In addition, This review will deal with different aspects of emerging contaminants, their origin, nature, detection, and treatment concerning water and wastewater.
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•CECs can be toxic to all kinds of organisms if exposed for a prolonged duration•Proper protocol needs to followed to accurately measure low concentration of CECs•HPLC and GC are the most commonly used instruments to detect CECs•Biological processes are low-cost treatment processes but gives low removal of CECs•AOPs are ecofriendly technologies that can provide a high removal efficiency of CECs
Emerging contaminants (ECs), a group of relatively low-concentration but high-toxicity pollutants in the environment, have attracted widespread attention in recent years. These trace pollutants can ...be enriched in organisms and finally transferred to human bodies, posing a potential hazard to public health. Biochar, a low-cost and high-efficiency adsorbent, has been used to treat ECs in water. However, due to certain limitations of pristine biochar, such as poor adsorption capacity, narrow adsorption range, and other shortcomings, it is necessary to modify biochar to improve its applications in water treatment for ECs. Currently, there are a lot of reports on the removal of ECs from water by modified biochar. These studies explored different modification methods to functionalize biochar with various physicochemical properties, which resulted in distinct adsorption effects, behaviors and mechanisms of modified biochar on different ECs. There is a need to systematically review and digest the knowledge on the adsorption of ECs on modified biochar. In this review, recent biochar modification methods used in ECs removal are firstly summarized, and the adsorption performance and mechanisms of modified biochar on typical ECs are then systematically reviewed. Finally, the main research directions and trends, as well as recommendations and suggestions for future development are pointed out.
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•Recent biochar modification methods for ECs are reviewed.•Adsorption performances on typical ECs are systematically summarized.•Mechanisms and factors controlling the adsorption of ECs are discussed.•Prospects and recommendations for future research are proposed.
The determination of contaminants of emerging concern (CECs) in environmental samples has become a challenging and critical issue. The present work focuses on miniaturized analytical strategies ...reported in the literature for the determination of CECs. The first part of the review provides brief overview of CECs whose monitoring in environmental samples is of particular significance, namely personal care products, pharmaceuticals, endocrine disruptors, UV-filters, newly registered pesticides, illicit drugs, disinfection by-products, surfactants, high technology rare earth elements, and engineered nanomaterials. Besides, an overview of downsized sample preparation approaches reported in the literature for the determination of CECs in environmental samples is provided. Particularly, analytical methodologies involving microextraction approaches used for the enrichment of CECs are discussed. Both solid phase- and liquid phase-based microextraction techniques are highlighted devoting special attention to recently reported approaches. Special emphasis is placed on newly developed materials used for extraction purposes in microextraction techniques. In addition, recent contributions involving miniaturized analytical flow techniques for the determination of CECs are discussed. Besides, the strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats of point of need and portable devices have been identified and critically compared with chromatographic methods coupled to mass chromatography. Finally, challenging aspects regarding miniaturized analytical methods for determination of CECs are critically discussed.
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•Microextraction, millifluidic and microfluidic approaches used for CECs determination are reviewed.•The occurrence and fate of CECs in the environment is described.•Challenging aspects of miniaturized analytical approaches are identified and discussed.•Relevant applications to the determination of CECs in environmental samples are discussed.
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•MOFs offer great opportunities in environmental remediation of different pollutants.•MOFs are potential adsorbents for water purification.•Strategies to improve the aqueous phase ...stability of MOFs are reviewed.•Performance of MOFs in aqueous phase emerging contaminants removal are highlighted.
Metal–organic frameworks (MOFs) have gained attention as promising materials for aqueous-phase sorptive removal of emerging contaminants (ECs). Attributes such as large adsorption capacity, high surface area, tunable porosity, hierarchical structure, and recyclability give MOFs an edge over conventional adsorbents. The poor stability of MOFs in water is a major challenge to their real-world environmental application. The performance of MOFs and their selectivity toward targeted pollutants for removal can be regulated by judicious selection of metal ion and organic linker. A range of water-stable MOFs (e.g., MIL-53, MIL-100, MIL-101, UiO-66, and MIL-125) and their composites with other materials have been reported to remove the ECs from water. The present review critically addressed the performance of MOFs for the adsorptive removal of different categories of ECs from water and the adsorption mechanisms involved. The performance of MOFs compared with other adsorbents has also been discussed. This body of rapidly developing research signifies the emerging importance of MOFs in environmental applications and provides a future direction for the development of treatment technology to effectively remove ECs from aqueous environments.
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•Ternary g-CN/CuFe2O4/MoS2 exhibits excellent visible light driven photoactivity.•98% Ciprofloxacin degradation was obtained with 0.1 g/l catalyst and 0.5 g/l PMS.•Dual Z-scheme ...heterojunction formation evolves efficient charge separation.•Both radical and non-radical based mechanisms were efficacious for CIP degradation.•Plausible CIP degradation pathway was proposed based on identified intermediates.
Modulation in the constituent composition of heterojunction composite materials can efficiently separate photogenerated charge carriers and promote significant improvement towards visible light aided photocatalytic degradation of recalcitrant pollutants. Herein, a novel ternary heterojunction composite g-CN/CuFe2O4/MoS2 (CNCuMo) has been fabricated by improvising g-C3N4 as a fuel and the supporting matrix. The stable dual Z-scheme heterojunction manifested superior visible light driven catalytic activity through efficient electron/hole (e-/h+) separation and generation of reactive species through peroxymonosulphate (PMS) activation. Various surface bound redox cycles play prominent roles in transport of photogenerated charge carriers, activation of adsorbed PMS species and generation of reactive radicals. Benefiting from their synergistic effects, visible light aided photocatalytic degradation of refractory antibiotic Ciprofloxacin (CIP) was studied. 98% CIP was degraded (with 74.8% mineralization) using 0.1 g/l of ternary composite with 10 wt% MoS2 (CNCuMo(10)) and 0.5 g/l of PMS, within 60 min of visible light irradiation. Scavenging experiments confirmed the simultaneous activity of both radical and non-radical species towards degradation. The system also exhibited satisfactory CIP degradation efficiency in various surface water matrixes. LCMS/MS analysis of the identified intermediates interpreted the probable degradation pathways of CIP molecules. Magnetic retrievability, recyclability for five cycles, good structural stability and low metal ion leaching tendency of the synthesized photocatalyst elucidate its potential application for degradation of emerging pollutants for water decontamination.
Wastewater is water that has already been contaminated by domestic, industrial and commercial activity that needs to be treated before it could be discharged into some other water bodies to avoid ...even more groundwater contamination supplies. It consists of various contaminants like heavy metals, organic pollutants, inorganic pollutants and Emerging contaminants. Research has been doing on all types of contaminates more than a decade, but this emerging contaminants is the contaminants which arises mostly from pharmaceuticals, personal care products, hormones and fertilizer industries. The majority of emerging contaminants did not have standardized guidelines, but may have adverse effects on human and marine organisms, even at smaller concentrations. Typically, extremely low doses of emerging contaminants are found in the marine environment and cause a potential risk to the aquatic animals living there. When contaminants emerge in the marine world, they are potentially toxic and pose many risks to the health of both man and livestock. The aim of this article is to review the Emerging contaminate sources, detection methods and treatment methods. The purpose of this study is to consider the adsorption as a beneficial treatment of emerging contaminants also advanced and cost effective emerging contaminates treatment methods.
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•Sources and causes of Emerging Contaminants has been discussed.•Treatment methods and the Detection of Emerging Contaminants has been explained.•Different types of emerging contaminants and advancement in its treatment were reviewed.•Latest advances and further improvements in Adsorption of emerging contaminants were addressed.
In recent years, emerging contaminants (ECs) of high concern are broadly distributed throughout the environmental matrices because of various industrial practices and anthropogenic inputs, i.e., ...human-made activities. With ever increasing scientific knowledge, technological advancement, socio-economic awareness, people are now more concern about the widespread distribution of environmentally related ECs of high concern. As, ECs possess serious ecological threats and potential risks to human health and aquatic life, even at minor concentrations. The controlled or uncontrolled discharge and long-term persistence of ECs that includes micro-pollutants, endocrine disruptors (EDs), pesticides, pharmaceuticals, hormones, toxins, and industrially-related synthetic dyes and dyes-containing hazardous pollutants, etc. pose a significant challenge to policy regulators, engineers, and scientific community. The conventional treatment technologies are proved ineffective for the complete elimination and removal of an array of contaminants of emerging environmental concern in various biological and environmental samples. In order to overcome the aforementioned ecological threats, tremendous research efforts have been made to boost the efficiency of remediation techniques or develop new modalities to detect, quantify and treat the samples efficiently. The boom in biotechnology and environmental engineering offers potential opportunities to develop advanced and innovative remediation techniques in the field of water treatment. This review discusses the environmental and health hazards associated with a widespread distribution of micro-pollutants, pesticides, pharmaceuticals, hormones, and industrially-related synthetic dyes and dyes-containing hazardous pollutants, etc. in the water bodies, i.e., surface water, groundwater, and industrial wastewater streams. Life-cycle distribution of emerging (micro)-pollutants with suitable examples from various industrial sources viewpoints is also discussed. The later part of the review focuses on innovative and cost-effective remediation (removal) approaches from phase-changing treatment technologies for these ECs of high concern.
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•Herein, we reviewed environmentally-related emerging contaminants (ECs) of high concern.•Potential ECs sources and analytical modalities for detection, quantification, and treatment are discussed.•Significant actions are urgently required to tackle/control the ECs in the environment.
Emerging pollutants in the marine ecosystem, as well as their possible impact on live species, have become a rising cause of worry. A traditional wastewater treatment plants alone are not successful ...in eliminating such massive contaminant groups and therefore additional water treatment is required which is to be cost effective. Since standard primary and secondary treatment plants are unsuccessful at eliminating or degrading these harmful chemicals, a cost-effective tertiary treatment approach is proposed. Adsorption is a successful approach for Contaminants removal globally, because it is low installation expense, high performance and has easy operational design. Emerging pollutants have been removed from wastewaters using various adsorbents like activated carbons, improved bio chars, Nano adsorbents, hybrid adsorbents, and others. The purpose of this paper is to review the source of contaminants and the concept of adsorption when separating emerging contaminants. The present study aims to examine the adsorption mechanism as an effective approach for treating emerging contaminants. Then, the analysis of natural and man-made adsorbents for the separation of contaminants is examined along with its comparison. Also, future view on emerging contaminants and adsorbents in modern generation has been discussed.
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•Adsorption has a lot of flexibility in terms of pollutant removal in the aqueous solution.•The effectiveness of adsorption in the elimination of emerging pollutants is highlighted.•In the Adsorption process, over 95% of the emerging pollutants were eliminated.•Different types of adsorbents and various applications of Adsorption were reviewed.•Latest advances and further improvements in Adsorption were addressed.
Biomass to biochar-based environmental catalysis: processing, functionalization, characterization and applications.
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•BC could be facilely tuned to show ...photo/electro/sono/bioredox-activity.•BC could catalyze the degradation and mineralization of persistent emerging pollutants.•BC could replace traditional metals in selected environmental remediation processes.•Effects of charge transfer, hierarchical porosity and redox potential are elucidated.•The future of (metal-free) BC-based environmental catalysis is bright.
Biochar has emerged as a new class of biomass-derived functional materials that can be obtained using a plethora of thermochemical conversion techniques. Biochar-based environmental catalysts have potential applications toward a positive, planet-level impact. Here, recent observations in the activated conversions of emerging contaminants are reviewed, highlighting the most influential advancements, including metal-free processes. The status quo of the underlying interaction mechanisms are summarized, revealing the active functional moieties, persistent free radicals, graphitic degree and electron transfer capacity collectively and synergistically regulate the catalytic potency. These remarkable features convey biochar’s high activity and flexibility into viable chemo-redox, photo-, bio-, sono-, and electrocatalysis. Advanced coupling processes and some perspectives on future possibilities are proposed at the end.
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