Recent trends in treatment technologies of emerging contaminants

In the recent years a group of contaminants, known collectively as emerging contaminants (ECs), have attracted considerable attention due to their widespread in the environment, and lack of knowledge on their impacts on ecosystem and human health. This review gives an overview on the sources, impacts, and conventional treatment technologies of ECs and an in-depth review of the literature on the state-of-the-art treatment technologies and their performance in the removal of ECs from water sources and drinking water. A careful statistical analysis of the number of publications on the different treatment technologies of ECs was performed to identify the hot spots in this research area. Conventional treatment technologies are not able to remove ECs sufficiently. The discharge of raw or partially treated wastewater is the main source of ECs in the environment. The research in recent years is focusing on using advanced treatment process (AOPs), followed by adsorption and membrane technologies. From a technical point of view, AOPs surpass other treatment technologies as they can completely eradicate ECs without the generation of side products. Developing efficient, green, and cost-effective materials to be used as adsorbents, photocatalysts, membranes, or membrane fillers, is one of the main research trends nowadays. Combined AOPs based on exploiting solar light, ultrasound and electrochemistry are gaining growing interest and show high potential for the treatment of ECs.