Hazardous ions decontamination: From the element to the material

Abstract

Nowadays, water scarcity is a major environmental concern worldwide. Despite the numerous international water regulations, pollution levels are still rising due to anthropogenic activities. The main difficulty of water treatment lays in the varied nature of its pollutants. Toxic metal ions are particularly hard to remove given their high solubility, mobility, and permanence in the aqueous environment. Moreover, many of these contaminants can bioaccumulate and be biomagnified through the food chain, threatening animal and human life. Our aim in this review is to abroad toxic ions decontamination from a different point of view. First, a summary of the more relevant decontamination strategies is provided, highlighting their advantages and disadvantages. Next, a selection of most toxic ions present in polluted waters is reviewed, focusing on their physicochemical properties and hazardous effects. Also, we describe the environmental behavior of these ions and how they can insert into the daily diet of plants or animals, reaching out to humans. We also dedicated a section for analyzing how to design more efficient, selective, and suitable materials for ion removal from water by knowing the ions' features. This approach would lead us to a targeted design achieving higher performance in decontamination processes. Finally, the author's outlook discussed where to be heading in this field of materials science is given.

Keywords

• Water pollution
• Toxic ions
• Remediation strategies
• Metal ions removal