Removal of contaminants in wastewater, such as heavy metals, has become a severe problem in the world. Numerous technologies have been developed to deal with this problem. As an emerging technology, nanotechnology has been gaining increasing interest and many nanomaterials have been developed to remove heavy metals from polluted water, due to their excellent features resulting from the nanometer effect. In this work, novel nanomaterials, including carbon-based nanomaterials, zero-valent metal, metal-oxide based nanomaterials, and nanocomposites, and their applications for the removal of heavy metal ions from wastewater were systematically reviewed. Their efficiency, limitations, and advantages were compared and discussed. Furthermore, the promising perspective of nanomaterials in environmental applications was also discussed and potential directions for future work were suggested.

In this work, a facile oxidation strategy was developed to prepare novel tungsten disulfide/tungsten trioxide (WS₂/WO₃) heterostructures for adsorbing organic dyes efficiently by combining the hydrophilic property of WO₃ and the superior dye affinity of WS₂. The structural and elemental properties of the synthesized hybrid materials were systematically investigated, and the results demonstrated the retained flower-like morphology of the primitive WS₂ and the successful introduction of WO₃. Furthermore, surface properties such as a superior hydrophilicity and negative-charged potential were also demonstrated by a water contact angle characterization combined with a Zeta potential analysis. The performance of the obtained WS₂/WO₃ hybrid materials for removing Rhodamine B (RhB) from wastewater was evaluated. The results showed that the maximum adsorption capacity of the newly synthesized material could reach 237.1 mg/g. Besides, the adsorption isotherms were also simulated by a statistical physics monolayer model, which revealed the non-horizontal orientation of adsorbates and endothermic physical interaction. Finally, the adsorption mechanism and the recyclability revealed that the partial oxidation strategy could contribute to a higher adsorption capacity by modulating the surface properties and could be applied as a highly efficient strategy to design other transition metal dichalcogenides (TMDs) heterostructures for removing organic dyes from wastewater.

Iron- and cobalt-based heterogeneous catalysts are widely applied for activating peroxymonosulfate (PMS) to degrade organic pollutants. However, few studies have unveiled the clear synergistic mechanism of iron and cobalt in ZSM-5. In this paper, the synergistic mechanism of enhanced PMS activation was revealed by constructing iron and cobalt bimetal modified ZSM-5 zeolite catalysts (FeCo-ZSM-5). The tetracycline hydrochloride (TCH) degradation experiments showed that the catalytic activity of FeCo-ZSM-5-2:3 was much higher than those of Fe-ZSM-5 and Co-ZSM-5. In addition, the influences of catalyst dosage, PMS concentration, reaction temperature, initial pH, and coexisting ions on TCH removal were systematically investigated in this paper. Density functional theory calculations indicated that Co was the main active site for PMS adsorption, and Fe increased the area of Co's positive potential mapped to the electron cloud. The Fe-Co bimetallic doping increased the area of positive potential mapped to the electron cloud and benefited the adsorption of PMS on the catalyst surface, which revealed the synergistic mechanism of bimetals. Electron paramagnetic resonance spectra and quenching experiments showed that sulfate radicals, singlet oxygen, and hydroxyl radicals were involved in the degradation of TCH. Furthermore, liquid chromatography-mass spectrometry was conducted to propose possible degradation pathways. This work provides certain guiding significance in understanding the synergistic effect of heterogeneous catalysts for tetracycline wastewater treatment.