%0 Journal Article
%T Ecofriendly Application of Nanomaterials: Nanobioremediation
%A Md. Rizwan
%A Man Singh
%A Chanchal K. Mitra
%A Roshan K. Morve
%J Journal of Nanoparticles
%D 2014
%I Hindawi Publishing Corporation
%R 10.1155/2014/431787
%X Nanomaterials exhibit unique physical and chemical properties and, hence, they have received much attention from scientists and researchers in different areas of environmental sciences, specifically in bioremediation. Bioremediation provides a good clean-up strategy for some types of waste, but as it is expected, it will not be useful for all. For example, bioremediation may not provide a feasible strategy at sites with high concentrations of chemicals that are toxic to most microorganisms. These include heavy metals and salt. Further, the advancement in science and technology has increased standard of living which directly or indirectly contributes to the increase in waste and toxic material. Therefore, the remediation of contaminants by use of existing technology is not effective and efficient in cleaning up the environment. Hence, nanomaterials may be applied for bioremediation, which will not only have less toxic effect on microorganisms, but will also improve the microbial activity of the specific waste and toxic material which will reduce the overall time consumption as well as reduce the overall cost. In this paper we have briefly summarized the major types of nanomaterials that have been used so far in bioremediation of waste and toxic materials. 1. Introduction There are various ecofriendly applications of nanomaterials (NMs) as far as environmental science is concerned, such as materials that provide clean water from polluted water sources in both large scale and portable applications and one that detects and cleans up environmental contaminants (waste and toxic material), that is, remediation [1, 2]. ¡°Remediate¡± means to solve the problem and ¡°bioremediation¡± means the process by which various biological agents, such as bacteria, fungi, protists, or their enzyme are used to degrade the environmental contaminants into less toxic forms [3]. The important benefit of bioremediation over conventional treatments is economical, high competence, minimization of chemical and biological sludge, selectivity to specific metals, no supplementary nutrient requirements, regeneration of biosorbent, and the possibility of metal recovery [4]. When bioremediation occurs on its own, then it is known as natural attenuation or intrinsic bioremediation and when it is incited to occur with the addition of fertilizers for the enhancement of bioavailability within the medium, then it is known as biostimulated bioremediation. Most common bioremediation technologies include bioventing, bioleaching, bioreactor, bioaugmentation, composting, biostimulation, land farming,
%U http://www.hindawi.com/journals/jnp/2014/431787/