Nanoenhanced Photocatalytic Approach for Separation of Oily Emulsion from Aqueous Effluents: Recent Trends, Future Perspective and Challenges

Supply of clean, freshwater for safe consumption has become a greatest challenge. Water resources are contaminated by anthropogenic as well as man-made activities day by day. Thus, it is required to utilize advanced wastewater treatment to ensure higher environmental protection and reuse the discharged water effectively. Oily wastewater is extremely toxic for aquatic organism as well as human being. Treating oil-contaminated water can be difficult because some of the microscopic compounds are hard to eliminate. The currently used methods are suitable for removing floating and suspended oily droplets from water. However, these conventional methods are not efficient for eliminating small, finely dispersed, colloidal oily particles. Application of membrane filtration is also restricted up to a certain extent due to fouling. In-depth research has been carried out to reduce membrane fouling. This chapter overviews the conventional techniques for elimination of oils from aqueous effluents. The chapter focuses the limitations of the conventional processes. The subsequent section of the chapter also illustrates the importance of using photocatalytic membrane. The concluding part of the chapter illustrates the future aspects of membrane technology and promising solutions associated with membrane modification methods using photocatalytic and/or hydrophilic nanomaterials and nanocomposite to enhance the permeate quality and water flux.