About this Research Topic
Air and water quality deterioration caused by rapid urbanization and industrialization, has risen social awareness and the need for more sustainable practices. Various emerging organic pollutants have been extensively detected in air and water nexuses, with potentially severe impacts on ecosystems and human health, due to their toxicity and persistent presence in nature. Sustainability urges for the development of green, yet cost-efficient catalytic processes to eliminate these contaminants, without the production of secondary pollutants.
Heterogeneous catalytic oxidation processes (HCOPs) such as catalytic ozonation techniques, photocatalysis, Fenton/Fenton-based catalysis and sulfate radical-based catalysis have been broadly employed as the effective technologies for the treatment of wastewater with aqueous organic pollutants and VOCs elimination. Nanostructured materials with exceptional physiochemical properties have attracted great research interest. By manoeuvring the structure or surface properties of these materials, active sites could be tailored towards specific catalytic processes. To construct a sustainable future, intensive research effort has been made to design the catalytic active nanostructured materials and to improve the efficiency of HCOPs. Apart from metal-based nanomaterials, the emerging metal-free nanocarbons have also been designed as a promising alternative, to avoid secondary pollution caused by metal leaching.
The purpose of this Research Topic is to showcase the state-of-the-art catalytic active nanostructured materials (metal-based and metal-free), in order to solve key issues in environmental remediation using catalytic oxidation, including aqueous organic pollutant decontamination and elimination of VOCs. Moreover, while the use of nanomaterials for catalytic oxidation has been understood to some extent, more insight into the advanced chemistry and mechanisms induced by these novel and unique materials is needed, especially the exploration of active sites and the generation and evolution of oxidation species in catalytic ozonation processes.
This Research Topic welcomes original research articles or reviews involving the design of nanostructured materials to achieve advanced efficiency in catalytic oxidation for environmental remediation, with a focus on:
• Design and development of nanostructured materials with high catalytic oxidation activity.
• Exploration of nanostructured materials for catalytic oxidation toward aqueous organic pollutant decontamination.
• Exploration of nanostructured materials for catalytic oxidation toward VOCs elimination.
• Catalytic mechanisms or novel chemistry insights of the nanostructured catalytic oxidation processes, via experiments and/or computational methods.
Keywords: Environmental catalysis, nanostructured materials, catalytic oxidation, catalytic mechanisms, environmental chemistry
Important Note: All contributions to this Research Topic must be within the scope of the section and journal to which they are submitted, as defined in their mission statements. Frontiers reserves the right to guide an out-of-scope manuscript to a more suitable section or journal at any stage of peer review.
