Abstract:
Sustainable accessibility and adequate availability of healthy water are preconditions for healthy living and effective uninterrupted ecological networking. However, the presence of organic pollutants like organochlorine (OC) and organophosphorus (OP) compounds in the environment has led to continuous shrinkage in the percentage of clean water available for humanity's basic needs. Interestingly, green nanoparticles biosynthesized using biogenic entities have recently emerged as an appealing choice for photocatalytic degradation of a wide range of pollutants owing to their eco-benignness. Particularly, biogenic iron-based nanoparticles (BIBNPs) have demonstrated unique properties such as ease of fabrication, excellent regenerability, strong redox potential, the ability to absorb a wide range of visible light, and the ability to produce highly reactive oxygen species that can enhance degradation efficiency and low aggregation which are beneficial for the remediation of water contaminants. The ability of BIBNPs to maintain stability and reactivity under various environmental conditions makes them a promising solution for environmental cleanup efforts. This review aims to critically report and empirically juxtapose the efficiency of biogenic iron and iron oxide NPs for photocatalytic degradation of a wide spectrum of OC and OP pollutants in aquatic environments. The work also generously elucidates the potential of BIBNPs as eco-benign and recyclable photocatalysts for the complete mineralization of OC and OP. The study also pragmatically expounded the photocatalytic degradation mechanism and presented frontiers and future research directions in circular economy, financial analysis, artificial intelligence integration, and hybrid technology. It was discovered that the most prevalent end mineralization products were CO2 and H2O, that the least amount of time needed for degradation was just five minutes, and plant extract was the most widely used bio-reductant for the bio-fabrication of BIBNPs. The greatest degradation efficiency was also found to be 100 % which is a testament to the superior efficacy of BIBNPs.
