Recent advancements in utilizing plant-based approaches for water and wastewater treatment technologies

Abstract

Overpopulation, expansion of agricultural practices, misuse of water resources, industrialization, and urbanization are among the major factors that have a big impact on the quantity and quality of water. It has been projected that around 4 billion humans would lack access to pure water by 2025. Thus, for a sustainable lifestyle, it is imperative to improve water quality. Conventional water and wastewater treatment technologies involve various chemical processes such as coagulation and disinfection and physical methods such as filtration and adsorption. For these processes, various chemicals are being used such as alum and lime in coagulation, chlorine and bromine in disinfection, and activated alumina, silica gel and zeolites in adsorption. However, such chemicals have high procurement cost and display negative impacts on environment and human health, due to which plant based coagulants, adsorbents, and disinfectants are now being majorly tested for water and wastewater treatment methods. The objective of this review article is to provide a recent update on plant derived coagulants, adsorbents, and disinfectants for the treatment of water and wastewater. This review article critically examines the various conventional plant based water cleaning methods and discusses their mechanisms. Prior to this study, plant-based coagulants, adsorbents, and disinfectants have been mainly separately reviewed, but a proper combined study is lacking. The present manuscript highlights the procedure of water and wastewater treatment plants first and then discusses all the three plant based water treatment methods sequentially. This study may be useful for the development of an efficient water and wastewater treatment method employing plant based coagulants, adsorbents, and disinfectants. The present study will also be beneficial for the researchers who are actively working on plant derived water cleaning methods.