Carbon Dots in Organic Pollutant Removal

It is well known that water pollution is caused by the presence of different toxic compounds, including those of an organic nature, which come mainly from anthropogenic sources. The development of the industrial sector has caused the discharge of untreated or poorly treated residual liquids, which contain high concentrations of organic molecules such as antibiotics and dyes that affect the environment and the health of living beings. Among the different remediation technologies to remove toxic compounds from contaminated environmental matrices, degradation and adsorption are outstanding because of their high efficiency. In this sense, various types of materials have been synthesized and applied for the removal of pollutants. Carbon dots (C-Dots) are nanoparticles that have been used as part of hybrid materials allowing the effective degradation or adsorption of organic pollutants with better performance in comparison with the use of classical photocatalytic materials or adsorbents. In this chapter, an introduction about the removal of organic pollutants based on photodegradation and adsorption processes is presented. Then, the basic principles of C-Dots, routes of synthesis, and characterization techniques are commented on. Finally, advances found in the literature on the use of materials based on C-Dots for water decontamination are discussed. This chapter illustrates that C-Dots are effective materials to photodegrade and adsorb organic pollutants from real samples. In fact, degradation efficiencies from 81.0 to 100% were achieved in the research works discussed in this chapter. Removal percentages from 69.0 to 97.0% were reached in most of the discussed works based on adsorption processes. All these aspects and some challenges related to the use of these materials are included in this chapter.