A short review of recent discoveries in montmorillonite‐based photocatalysts for organic dye water pollutant degradation

Abstract Organic dye pollutants are the most common type of pollutant found in water and wastewater as a result of various industrial activities. In particular, one of the largest contributors is the textile industry, which uses a lot of organic dyes to produce its goods. Organic dyes that remain in the effluents are typically permanent and difficult to detoxify using traditional wastewater treatment strategies. Photocatalysis using semiconductors have emerged as an attractive wastewater treatment method for resolving the major drawbacks of traditional methods. Montmorillonite has been presented as a conceivable dye adsorbent. When a semiconductor is incorporated, its adsorptive capability assists in imposing heterogeneous photoactivity. It is widely employed in a variety of applications due to fundamental characteristics such as high flexibility, swelling, ion exchange ability, acidity, usage in catalytic amounts, milder reaction conditions, benefit in reusability, selectivity, high yield, cheap cost, and so on. In this review, we specifically describe the last 3 years' development of dye degradation employing recently developed montmorillonite (MMT)‐based materials, as well as their preparation methods. In addition, the photocatalytic degradation of various types of organic dye pollutants, such as anionic and cationic dyes, was also studied in this review. The findings reveal that MMT‐based materials have a wide range of applications in the photocatalytic degradation of contaminants existing in the environment.