Recent advances in heavy metal removal from wastewater using nanomaterials and cloud point extraction: a comprehensive review

The toxicity of heavy metals to both humans and aquatic life makes them a major environmental concern. Heavy metals such as lead, mercury, cadmium, chromium, and arsenic are major causes of concern. These metals can find their way into water systems by natural processes like soil erosion, as well as industrial ones like mining, electroplating, and metal polishing. They can bioaccumulate in wildlife and offer substantial health concerns to humans through numerous exposure pathways, leading to neurological and developmental disorders, kidney damage and bone degradation, immune system impairments in children, cancer, and skin lesions. Therefore, it is crucial to develop efficient technology for removing heavy metals from contaminated water to safeguard the environment and public health. Promising developments in cloud point extraction (CPE) and photocatalytic nanomaterials could be explored in heavy metal remediation. Photocatalytic nanomaterials can effectively remove heavy metals either by adsorbing or precipitating them. CPE is a very efficient way to separate different types of aqueous solutions to pre-concentrate and remove trace levels of heavy metals from water and wastewater. Although research has demonstrated that CPE and photocatalytic nanomaterials can successfully filter out heavy metals from water, practical applications necessitate the development of more effective and scalable manufacturing processes. Improving extraction conditions, recovering resources, and reusing them are all part of this process, as is creating cost-effective synthesis methods. To make these procedures work with other heavy metal ions, it's important to make them more selective and specific.