Magnetically separable (carbon) graphene oxide based nano-composites for water treatment

Abstract Owing to the presence of various water contaminants, the accessibility of pure water has become a major global challenge in recent times. To address this problem, several researchers demonstrated various water decontamination techniques like oxidation, membrane filtration, ion exchange, and adsorption methods. Over the years, powdered adsorbents are widely used to decontaminate the water from pollutants. However, these adsorbents are difficult to separate from water after the adsorption process. Considering this, magnetically separable adsorbents have been emerged as an excellent alternate to conventional powdered materials. Particularly, graphene oxide-based magnetic composites have shown tremendous potential due to their facile synthesis, large specific surface area, controllable porosity, tenable functionalities, high adsorption capacities, recyclability, and ease of isolation from water after adsorption. In this chapter the synthesis of magnetically separable graphene oxide-based composites, their adsorption performance, including isotherms and kinetics, along with future aspects of the field will be discussed.