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BRIEF RESEARCH REPORT article

Front. Environ. Sci.
Sec. Water and Wastewater Management
Volume 12 - 2024 | doi: 10.3389/fenvs.2024.1488895

Magnetic nanoparticles for eliminating endocrine-disrupting compounds in water treatment -a quantitative systematic analysis

Provisionally accepted
Juliana Guimarães Juliana Guimarães 1Igor Taveira Igor Taveira 1Thuane Mendes Thuane Mendes 1Alex Enrich-Prast Alex Enrich-Prast 2*Fernanda Abreu Fernanda Abreu 1*
  • 1 Federal University of Rio de Janeiro, Rio de Janeiro, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil
  • 2 Linköping University, Linköping, Östergötland, Sweden

The final, formatted version of the article will be published soon.

    Endocrine-disrupting compounds (EDCs) are a group of emergent pollutants that affect the endocrine system. EDCs can cause harm to humans and animals and unbalance the aquatic ecosystem even at low concentrations. Several methods are applied to remove EDCs, and recently, magnetic nanoparticles (MNPs), a low-cost and magnetically-responsive approach, have been introduced as modern innovative tools for this purpose. Thus, we conducted a systematic analysis to determine the characteristics of MNPs required to optimize EDCs removal in water/waste treatments. Most studies used magnetite (Fe 3 O 4 ) nanoparticles, a low-cost and easily acquired material, followed by other metallic oxides nanoparticles (MOPs) like zinc, copper, and nickel oxides. Short adsorption time (0.5 -15 min) and small MNP (10 -80 nm) were the most prominent and successful in EDCs recovery approaches. After analyzing data published in the last decade, results showed that, in general, processes that apply lower concentrations of MNP seem to achieve a significant higher removal rate. For instance, MNPs formulations are able to successfully remove >90% of bisphenols and phtalates.However, depending on the EDCs type, the concentration of MNPs have to be adjusted to increase EDCs recovery rates, possibly due to their different chemical compositions and properties. Our results indicate that MNPs are an efficient, with potential to be a relatively cheap way to extract or eliminate EDCs from wastewater and should be considered an innovative tool to be included in waste treatment protocols.

    Keywords: endocrine disrupting compounds, Nanotechnology, Water treatment, Water Pollution, wastewater treatment

    Received: 30 Aug 2024; Accepted: 07 Nov 2024.

    Copyright: © 2024 Guimarães, Taveira, Mendes, Enrich-Prast and Abreu. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.

    * Correspondence:
    Alex Enrich-Prast, Linköping University, Linköping, 581 83, Östergötland, Sweden
    Fernanda Abreu, Federal University of Rio de Janeiro, Rio de Janeiro, 21941-901, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil

    Disclaimer: All claims expressed in this article are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of their affiliated organizations, or those of the publisher, the editors and the reviewers. Any product that may be evaluated in this article or claim that may be made by its manufacturer is not guaranteed or endorsed by the publisher.