Application of magnetic nanomaterials in environmental monitoring

To date, the greatest applications of magnetic materials (MNMs)—and perhaps the greatest impact—have been in the field of environmental applications, such as aqueous environment treatment by improving the quality of drinking water resources or by removing industrial pollutants from environmental water samples. Nowadays, MNMs are considered to be an advanced sorbent in the treatment of environmental samples for the purposes of preconcentration and removal of environmental pollutants at trace levels and high levels, respectively. The main advantage of MNMs as sorbents is their magnetic behavior, which allows them to separate pollutants from large volume environmental samples simply and quickly with the aid of a magnet without the need for tedious and time-consuming centrifugation and filtration. In addition, nanosized sorbents possess high surface areas and short diffusion routes, which lead to higher extraction or removal capacities and efficiencies. In this chapter, the applications of nanomaterials as sorbents in environmental analysis will be reviewed. Initially, the properties of some of the advanced and important nanomaterials used as sorbents in environmental analysis will be mentioned. Then the application of these sorbents in the preconcentration and removal of different pollutants from environmental samples will be reviewed.