Water pollution caused by heavy metal ions is becoming a serious threat to human and aquatic lives day by day. Therefore, the treatment of heavy metal ions is of special concern for environmental scientists and engineers. Historically, various methods, such as physical and chemical precipitation, ion-exchange, reverse osmosis, membrane filtration, electrochemical treatment, solvent extraction, and adsorption, have been widely studied for the removal of these metal ions from aqueous/wastewater. However, over the past few decades, conducting polymer-based adsorbents have received considerable attention owing to their potential applications for different heavy metal ions especially Cr(VI), Zn(II), and Pb(II). Among the various conducting polymers, polypyrrole (PPy) based adsorbents play a major role for the removal of various heavy metal ions due to their ease of synthesis, biocompatibility and redox properties. The current review has mainly focused on the physico-chemical properties, adsorption characteristics and mechanism of different polypyrrole-based adsorbents, including PPy/biosorbents, PPy/Fe₃O₄ nanocomposites, PPy–polyaniline nanofibers, PPy–graphene nanocomposites, exfoliated PPy-organically modified clay nanocomposites, and hierarchical porous PPy-nanoclusters, as well as their applications towards the removal of heavy metal ions.

Background: Metal tungstates have attracted much attention due to their interesting structural and photoluminescence properties. Depending on the size of the bivalent cation present, the metal tungstates will adopt structures with different phases. In this work, three different phases of metal tungstates MWO₄ (M= Ba, Ni and Bi) were synthesized via the sucrose templated method. Results: The powders of BaWO₄ (tetragonal), NiWO₄ (monoclinic) and Bi₂WO₆ (orthorhombic) formed after calcination temperatures of 750, 650 and 600°C for 4 h respectively are found to be crystalline and exist in their pure phase. Based on Scherrer estimation, their crystallite size are of nanosized. BET results showed NiWO₄ has the highest surface area. BaWO₄ exhibited less Raman vibrations than the NiWO₄ because of the increased lattice symmetry but Bi₂WO₆ showed almost the same Raman vibrations as BaWO₄. From the UV-vis spectra, the band gap transition of the metal tungstates are of the order of BaWO₄ > Bi₂WO₆ > NiWO₄. Broad blue-green emission peaks were detected in photoluminescence spectra and the results showed the great dependence on morphology, crystallinity and size of the metal tungstates. Conclusion: Three different phases of metal tungstates of BaWO₄ (scheelite), NiWO₄ (wolframite) and Bi₂WO₆ (perovskite layer) in their pure phase were successfully prepared by the simple and economical sucrose-templated method. The highest surface area is exhibited by NiWO₄ while largest band gap is shown by BaWO₄. These materials showed promising optical properties.

Due to rapid population growth, technological advancement and industrial revolution, the rate of generated waste effluents has become a grave concern. Cesium which possesses high fission yield is generally transferred to liquid wastes especially those emanated from the nuclear power plants, reprocessing of spent fuels, nuclear weapon testing and radionuclides production facilities for medical applications etc. Radiocesium (¹³⁷Cs) is one of the hazardous radionuclides creating adverse effects on human health and environment. Due to its physical (T_1/2 = 30.17y) and chemical characteristics (alkalinity, solubility etc.), it can be easily assimilated by the living organisms. As a result, the removal of cesium from wastewater is imperative from the health point of view. Several techniques are implemented but in recent time, adsorption has been gaining increasing attention to the scientific community owing to a number of reasons. Hence, this paper presents an overview on sorption of cesium from wastewaters. Consequently, several critical parameters such as sorption capacity, percentage efficiency and the influence of several factors on cesium uptake by various adsorbents have been reviewed in details.

In this work, a polypyrrole-polyethyleneimine (PPy-PEI) nano-adsorbent was successfully synthesized for the removal of methylene blue (MB) from an aqueous solution. Synthetic dyes are among the most prevalent environmental contaminants. A new conducting polymer-based adsorbent called (PPy-PEI) was successfully produced using ammonium persulfate as an oxidant. The PEI hyper-branched polymer with terminal amino groups was added to the PPy adsorbent to provide more effective chelating sites for dyes. An efficient dye removal from an aqueous solution was demonstrated using a batch equilibrium technique that included a polyethyleneimine nano-adsorbent (PPy-PEI). The best adsorption parameters were measured at a 0.35 g dosage of adsorbent at a pH of 6.2 and a contact period of 40 min at room temperature. The produced PPy-PEI nano-adsorbent has an average particle size of 25–60 nm and a BET surface area of 17 m²/g. The results revealed that PPy-PEI nano-composite was synthesized, and adsorption was accomplished in the minimum amount of time. The maximum monolayer power, qmax, for MB was calculated using the isothermal adsorption data, which matched the Langmuir isotherm model, and the kinetic adsorption data, which more closely fitted the Langmuir pseudo-second-order kinetic model. The Langmuir model was used to calculate the maximum monolayer capacity, or qmax, for MB, which was found to be 183.3 mg g⁻¹. The as-prepared PPy-PEI nano-adsorbent totally removes the cationic dyes from the aqueous solution.

The performance of a modified electrode of nanocomposite films consisting of polypyrrole–chitosan–titanium dioxide (Ppy-CS-TiO₂) has been explored for the developing a non-enzymatic glucose biosensors. The synergy effect of TiO₂ nanoparticles (NPs) and conducting polymer on the current responses of the electrode resulted in greater sensitivity. The incorporation of TiO₂ NPs in the nanocomposite films was confirmed by X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS) spectra. FE-SEM and HR-TEM provided more evidence for the presence of TiO₂ in the Ppy-CS structure. Glucose biosensing properties were determined by amperommetry and cyclic voltammetry (CV). The interfacial properties of nanocomposite electrodes were studied by electrochemical impedance spectroscopy (EIS). The developed biosensors showed good sensitivity over a linear range of 1–14 mM with a detection limit of 614 μM for glucose. The modified electrode with Ppy-CS nanocomposite also exhibited good selectivity and long-term stability with no interference effect. The Ppy-CS-TiO₂ nanocomposites films presented high electron transfer kinetics. This work shows the role of nanomaterials in electrochemical biosensors and describes the process of their homogeneous distribution in composite films by a one-step electrochemical process, where all components are taken in a single solution in the electrochemical cell.