Recent advances in advanced oxidation processes for removal of contaminants from water: a comprehensive review

Abstract Water reuse for drinking, irrigation, district cooling, process heating/cooling, landscaping, etc. remains pivotal to water security and sustainability. Advanced oxidation processes (AOPs) are at the heart of the industrial wastewater treatment especially the removal of contaminants of emerging concern. Recent studies conducted to advance the AOP technologies for the degradation of industrial wastewater pollutants generally encompass seven areas, namely artificial neural networks (ANNs), sustainability, plasma activation, catalyst structures, AOP-Bioremediation, and membrane-based AOPs. This review showcases the advancements in AOPs for the oxidation and removal of a wide range of contaminants of emerging concern from water. A detailed discussion and a critical examination of recently published works is presented in this article. Much of the reports have recorded technical progress in the form of, improved energy efficiency through the use of low-energy and renewable energy sources, successful prediction process performance and process control, improved light capturing capabilities through plasmonic effect, successful integration with biological treatment methods and membrane filtration. In spite of this progress, a number of challenges still persist such as the lack of appropriate ANN modeling structures, impractical spatial and temporal scales of investigation (i.e. scales that are too low for real operations), membrane fouling in membrane-based AOPs. These challenges have been pointed out and the strategies for addressing them have been highlighted in the article.