A Current Review on Conducting Polymer-Based Catalysts: Advanced Oxidation Processes for the Removal of Aquatic Pollutants

Water pollution has emerged as a serious problem worldwide in recent years. Aquatic ecosystem disruption damages ecological homeostasis and leads to disturbances in living beings. Conventional water treatment methods entail new implementations to eliminate pollutants due to excessive anthropogenic activities and the increasing requirements for treating industrial effluents. Recently, developments in conducting polymer-based catalytic materials have brought important achievements in water treatment and provide a perspective for enhancing conventional materials and processes. The advanced oxidation process is a state-of-the-art method that led to being used in this area depending on generating highly active radical species. The interaction between the conducting polymer and their composites was emphasized offering unique properties such as photosensitivity with low band gap energy levels, suitable processing, electrical conductivity, environmental stability, corrosion resistance, and most significantly low cost, low energy requirement, and reusability performance. Thus, high-quality elimination of pollutants in the water was associated with promising potential owing to developing catalytic properties gained by combining nanoparticles with conducting polymers. This review presents a brief overview of the recent updates of polyaniline, polypyrrole, polythiophene, poly(3,4-ethylenedioxythiophene), poly(phenylene) poly(o-phenylenediamine), and poly(1-naphthylamine), their derivatives, nanocomposites, and their advanced oxidation process applications in water treatment.