Adsorption: A Cost-Effective Wastewater Treatment Technology for Removal of Conventional and Emerging Organic Contaminants

Abstract

Water is a vital component for sustaining life on the earth because it is interacted with all metabolic activities of all living beings (human, plants, and others). The decomposition of organic pollutants, in general, causes oxygen deficiency in water bodies that can lead to severe damages in the ecosystem. Therefore, cost-effective innovative methods for the purification of wastewater is always needed. One of the most important methods that has gathered attention is adsorption. This method has witnessed continuous development in the case of the selected materials as adsorbents. Low cost as well as the production of new nano-materials have been used for the decontamination of water. In this chapter, a general overview based on the information available in the literature was produced to highlight the importance of adsorption as a method for the purification of water from conventional and emerging organic compounds.