Chitosan nano-composites applications for water remediation

Abstract

Water is the most crucial element for living, and the lack of pure and clean water has increased globally. Hence, the need for water remediation from different pollutants is a must. Developing different techniques to accomplish water purification is expanding every day. Chitosan is a biodegradable and eco-friendly biopolymer which is extensively used in various applications. Here, we focus on using chitosan nano complexes with ferrites, graphene, silver, and silica nanoparticles as novel, cheap, accurate, biocompatible, reusable, and fast nano-complexes. Different synthesis protocols were used to obtain Chitosan-nano complexes. Various techniques were used to characterize and test the synthesized nanocomplexes, such as UV-Vis spectroscopy, Fourier transforms infrared spectroscopy (FT-IR), powder-X-ray diffraction (p-XRD), scanning electron microscope (SEM), transmission electron microscopy (TEM), thermogravimetric analysis (TGA), Brunauer—Emmett–Teller (BET) analysis and Inductively coupled plasma mass spectrometry (ICP-MS). The chitosan-based nanocomplexes are used for water purification and detecting different chemical pollutants such as heavy metals, organic and dyes contaminations, and eliminating different pathogenic microorganisms from the environment.