Bio-Based Filter Materials for Wastewater Treatment - A Review

Clean water is essential to life and a crucial requirement for a sustainable society. Water bodies are often contaminated with a diverse range of pollutants resulting from both natural and anthropogenic activities. Different methods of water remediation have been proposed, including adsorption. Among the materials developed for contaminant adsorption from wastewater, bio-based filter materials offer innovative and sustainable solutions for wastewater treatment. These materials combine biological and engineered components to enhance pollutant removal, reduce operational costs, and promote environmental sustainability. This review explores bio-based filter materials, their components, properties, comparative efficiencies, challenges, and future research directions. In the review, some chitosan-based bio-filters were found to efficiently remove over 90% of copper and lead ions from waste effluents. Also, cellulose and lignin-based bio-filters were reported to efficiently remove over 80% of organic and inorganic contaminants from waste effluents without secondary pollution. Comparably, bio-based filter materials have high stability and adaptability to varying environmental conditions. However, this development faces challenges and setbacks, such as limitations to large-scale deployment. Insufficient mechanistic understanding of material-pollutant interactions and a lack of comprehensive environmental impact assessment through life cycle analysis on these vast bio-based materials limit the field application and large-scale real-life on-site deployment.