9. Metal Oxide Nanostructured Materials for Water Treatment: Prospectives and Challenges

Water being scarce is worth saving. The water contamination and pollution are increasing at greater pace posing serious threats to the ecosystem. However, the problem of water contamination has been solved upto much extent with the development and advancement in field of nanotechnology. Several modified and doped metal oxide nanostructured materials are used in water purification. These materials are synthesized by various techniques like hydrothermal synthesis, chemical vapour deposition method, sol gel method to obtain various types of materials possessing different properties which are immensely useful at nanoscale level due to their large surface area to volume ratio, band gap tunability along with high catalytic activity. Various characterisation techniques like X-ray Diffraction, Fourier Transform –Infra-Red spectroscopy, Scanning electron microscopy and Energy-dispersive X-ray spectroscopy, Transmission electron microscopy are needed to ensure the formation of metal oxide nanostructured materials. These metal oxide nanostructured materials are inevitably helpful in the form of catalyst for removal and purification of wastewater (like dyes and organic pollutants, inorganic materials) discharged from different industries by methods like photocatalysis, adsorption techniques, ion exchange process, disinfection process and electrochemical techniques for simultaneous heavy metal separation and detection.