Eco-Engineered BioNano Interfaces: Harnessing Biopolymers and Nanomaterials for Next-Generation Water Purification
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Abstract
Water pollution is a multidimensional environmental challenge involving inorganic contaminants, persistent organic chemicals, pathogens, particulate pollutants, and mixtures of emerging contaminants. Conventional treatment processes remain indispensable, yet individual operations can encounter limitations involving selectivity, fouling, secondary waste, energy consumption, chemical demand, or incomplete removal of trace contaminants. Eco-engineered BioNano interfaces—hybrid materials that combine renewable biopolymers with nanoscale functional phases—offer a route toward multifunctional purification platforms. Biopolymers including chitosan, cellulose, alginate, starch, lignin, pectin, and protein-derived materials provide renewable matrices, surface functional groups, processability, and opportunities for biodegradation or benign end-of-life pathways. Nanomaterials can contribute high specific surface area, tunable pore structures, catalytic activity, magnetic responsiveness, antimicrobial action, and selective molecular interactions. The interface between the two components is therefore more important than either component alone: it controls dispersion, accessibility of active sites, mass transfer, mechanical stability, regeneration, and the likelihood of nanoparticle release. This review synthesizes the literature on BioNano materials for adsorption, membrane filtration, photocatalysis, antimicrobial treatment, magnetic separation, and hybrid remediation. It also develops a comparative framework for material selection and discusses representative reported performance values from the literature. Particular emphasis is placed on realistic water matrices, regeneration, continuous-flow operation, life-cycle assessment, nanotoxicology, and safe-by-design principles. The review identifies a persistent translation gap between high-performance batch experiments and durable, low-cost, continuously operated systems. Future progress will depend on integrating green synthesis, renewable feedstocks, controlled nano–bio interfaces, process intensification, digital material design, resource recovery, and standardized environmental safety assessment. The central proposition is that next-generation water treatment should optimize not simply contaminant removal, but the combined metrics of treatment efficiency, selectivity, durability, recoverability, environmental safety, and life-cycle sustainability
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