article · Applied Materials Today
Recent advances in wastewater remediation focus on removing strontium ions, particularly the hazardous radioactive isotope strontium-90, to address environmental and health concerns. Emerging treatment strategies centre on advanced adsorbent materials, including metal-organic frameworks, carbon-based nanomaterials, and biosorbents derived from natural materials, which offer high surface area, selectivity, and environmentally benign processing. In addition, optimization efforts are improving the efficiency and reusability of ion-exchange resins. Membrane separation techniques, notably nanofiltration and reverse osmosis, also show promise for strontium removal, although membrane fouling continues to limit their performance. Hybrid systems that integrate adsorption with filtration have been developed to enhance overall treatment efficiency. Despite these developments, several critical engineering barriers persist, such as material scalability, cost-efficiency, and sustained long-term operational performance, indicating the need for continued innovation.
Contamination from strontium, particularly its radioactive form strontium-90, poses severe risks to human health and natural ecosystems. Developing efficient, scalable, and low-cost water treatment technologies ensures that radioactive and industrial pollutants can be captured safely from wastewater. These advancements support cleaner water supplies and promote sustainable, environmentally friendly approaches to managing toxic industrial waste.
The reviewed technologies could enable improved effluent treatment systems for facilities dealing with radioactive waste or industrial strontium contamination. Potential users include municipal water utilities, nuclear sector operators, and environmental remediation firms. However, commercial readiness remains at an early to intermediate stage: the abstract notes that critical commercial barriers around manufacturing scalability, cost-efficiency, long-term performance, and membrane fouling must be resolved before broad market implementation is viable.
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• MOFs and nanomaterials enhance the adsorption capacity of Sr²⁺. • Sr²⁺ biosorption is achieved by biosorbents in an environmentally benign process. • Hybrid systems combine adsorption of Sr²⁺ and filtration for enhanced efficiency. • Challenges, limitations, and future directions have been presented in detail. This review discusses current developments in strontium ion removal technologies from contaminated wastewater, focusing on new materials and methodologies for treatments of concern to the environment and health. Strontium, in particular its radioactive isotope, namely strontium-90 ( 90 Sr), represents one of the dangerous pollutants that call for effective remediation. The salient features of this advancement mainly deal with improved adsorbents consisting of MOFs (metal-organic frameworks), carbon-based nanomaterials , and biosorbents, which enhanced the uptake of strontium by high surface area and selectivity. Efforts are also being extended towards optimization for ion-exchange resins for higher efficiency coupled with reusability. The membrane filtration techniques involving nanofiltration and reverse osmosis yielded promising results, although membrane fouling remained a problem. Environmentally friendly, low-cost adsorbents from natural materials support sustainable water treatment. These are realized when scalability, cost-efficiency, and long-term performance challenges remain open; they thus are a worrisome element to call for further research and innovation.
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DOI: 10.1016/j.apmt.2025.102641
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