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Abstract
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Removal of contaminants in wastewater, such as heavy metals, has become a severe
problem in the world. The endless introduction of toxic heavy metals through industrialization
has worsened the heavy metal pollution in the environment. Up till now, numerous
technologies have been developed to solve this problem, including chemical precipitation, ion
exchange, adsorption, membrane filtration, electrochemical treatment, and so on. As an
emerging technology, nanotechnology has been gaining increasing interest and many
nanomaterials have been developed to remove heavy metals from polluted water, due to their
excellent features resulting from the nanometer effect. Heavy metals such as Pb, Zn, Cu, Hg,
etc. could pose a severe threat to human’s health because they can be accumulated
biologically in the food chain. In this work, novel nanomaterials, including graphene oxidebased
nanomaterials, and nanocomposites, and their applications for the removal of heavy
metal ions from wastewater were systematically reviewed. Their efficiency, limitations, and
advantages were compared and discussed [1]. Nano size graphene is known to possess large
surface area and some promising properties in terms of mechanical, electrical, chemical and
magnetism. Hence, graphene oxide-based nanomaterials are discovered to be useful in the
application of heavy metal removal from wastewater [2].
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