Chapter 2: Green Nanotechnology for High-performance Impurity Detection and Water Treatment

Due to the rapid growth of the world's population and accelerated industrialization progress, water scarcity has become one of the vital challenges in the 21st century. An increased amount of contaminated water is produced annually, which causes environmental pollution and life-threatening diseases to humans and animals. Thus, high-performance impurity detection and water treatment techniques are imperative and important to be developed. In recent decades, green nanotechnology has been applied in impurity detection and water treatment to enhance performance and efficiency. Various nanomaterials, such as quantum dots, nanotubes, nanosheets, and nanoparticles, have been utilized and fabricated into sensors, sorbents, photocatalysts, and membranes. In this chapter, the applications of nanotechnology in detection and purification for water issues will be introduced and reviewed. The recent developments in sensors, indicators, nanosorbents, nanophotocatalysts, nanofibers, and nanocomposite membranes for water treatment are presented and discussed. There is also a brief outlook on nanotechnology in impurity detection and water treatment.