Nanomaterials-based absorbents

Owing to the rapid growth of industrialization, urbanization, and modern agricultural practices, pollution of soil is on the rise. Heavy metal pollution of soil has been an environmental problem drawing worldwide attention over the decades. Various techniques can be utilized to clean up the contaminated soil from heavy metals for a healthy environment. With the advancement of nanotechnology, nanomaterials can function to sorb the contaminant, for example, metals and metalloids. Moreover, nanosized materials are capable of acting as sorbents to remove, remediate, and clean up heavy metals from soils using various technologies. This chapter gives brief explanations on the importance of metals in soil and their natural and anthropogenic sources in terms of soil. This chapter mainly reviews and evaluates the classification of natural and engineered nanomaterials, which are novel materials to remove, sorb, and clean up the metals in contaminated soil, using the available literature.