review · Arabian Journal of Chemistry
Two-dimensional materials known as MXenes demonstrate substantial capacity for environmental engineering, particularly in water treatment through adsorption. These materials display sorption capacities between 100 and 250 milligrams per gram for hazardous heavy metals including lead, hexavalent chromium, copper, uranium, and mercury. Beyond heavy metals, MXenes effectively capture radionuclides such as europium, strontium, barium, and thorium. They also remove persistent organic contaminants, showing high treatment performance against industrial dyes like methylene blue and rhodamine B, as well as pharmaceutical compounds including common antibiotics, anti-inflammatories, and hormones. Key functional properties underpinning these results include high surface area, good electrical conductivity, favourable thermal performance, and selective intermolecular interactions. Realising these capabilities sustainably requires detailed evaluations of their broader environmental impacts and comprehensive life cycle assessments.
Water systems face growing pressure from toxic heavy metals, radionuclides, and pharmaceutical residues that standard treatment methods struggle to capture completely. Identifying materials with high sorption capacities and selective molecular capture addresses urgent pollution challenges. MXenes provide high surface areas and strong adsorption capabilities, offering potential routes to clean industrial effluent and protect vulnerable water supplies from persistent chemical contaminants.
The findings highlight MXenes for water remediation equipment, targeted at industrial effluent operators and water utilities managing heavy metal, dye, or pharmaceutical pollution. Because the work remains focused on material sorption characteristics and identifies the need for environmental impact and life cycle assessments, development sits at an early, laboratory-based stage rather than near-market deployment.
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2D materials have garnered significant attention as potential solutions to various environmental challenges. Graphene, molybdenum disulfide, MXenes, and boron nitride have emerged as the most popular candidates among these materials. This article presents a comprehensive review and discussion on the emerging applications of MXenes in environmental engineering. MXenes have demonstrated immense potential as future materials for adsorption purposes. They have proven to be highly effective in removing emerging pollutants (heavy metals and organic pollutants) through the adsorption phenomenon. The effectiveness of MXenes in removing lead (Pb 2+ ), chromium (Cr 6+ ), copper (Cu 2+ ), uranium (U 6+ ), and mercury (Hg 2+ ) has been confirmed, with a sorption capacity ranging from 100 to 250 mg g −1 . Furthermore, MXenes have effectively removed several radionuclides, including uranium, europium, strontium, barium, and thorium. MXenes have proven to be highly efficient in treating water through adsorption in emerging organic pollutants, even for various organic dyes such as methylene blue, acid blue, congo red, methyl orange, and rhodamine B (RhB). Additionally, MXenes exhibit high treatment performance in adsorbing several pharmaceuticals like cloxacillin (CLX), ampicillin (AMP), amoxicillin (AMX), ciprofloxacin (CPX), amitriptyline (AMT), verapamil (VRP), carbamazepine (CBM), 17 α-ethinyl estradiol, ibuprofen (IBP), and diclofenac (DCF). Overall, MXenes offer several advantages, such as good conductivity, thermal performance, high surface area, and selectivity of intermolecular interactions. However, their application requires thoroughly evaluating their environmental impact and life cycle assessment.
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DOI: 10.1016/j.arabjc.2024.106052
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