Recent Advances in Olivine-Based Adsorbents for Water Treatment: A review

The scarcity of fresh water resources is one of the biggest challenges encountered in the world. To address this challenge, water treatment and reuse may provide an alternative solution to increase water availability and alleviate the burden on governments. Adsorption is an effective and economical water treatment method that can be applied for the removal of contaminants from water. Naturally available and low-cost materials such as olivine have shown promising results as adsorbents for removing diverse contaminants in water purification. Olivine is one of the most abundant minerals on Earth, comprising more than 50 % of the Earth’s upper mantle. It is a low-cost material that has shown a promising potential as an adsorbent material. This short review summarizes the potential applications of olivine as an adsorbent for water purification applications in the removal of a variety of contaminants from water. The adsorption mechanisms proposed for olivine as an adsorbent in water treatment applications are summarized. Furthermore, other uses of olivine in the field of environmental remediation are also listed. The future prospects for the use of olivine in the field of water treatment are finally outlined. This topic is relevant and timely, given the increasing demand for sustainable materials in water purification applications.