5. Conclusions and future perspectives
In this review, an attempt has been made to focus on the recent developments related to the detoxification of water and wastewater by low-cost adsorbents utilizing agro-industrial and municipal wastes. It is important to note here that the maximum adsorption capacities reported in this paper provide some idea of adsorbent’s effectiveness for each type of pollutant, and mainly depends on experimental conditions. The use of waste materials as low-cost adsorbents for removing various pollutants from water and wastewater presents many attractive features especially their contribution in the reduction of costs for waste disposal, therefore contributing to environmental protection. Although the amount of available literature data on the use of low-cost adsorbents in water and wastewater treatment is increasing at a tremendous pace, there are still several gaps which need to be filled. Some of the important issues can be summarized below: