Nanotechnology has the potential to significantly impact the environment through applications such as water purification, pollution remediation, and green energy technologies. It can remove contaminants from water supplies and air at the nanoscale and help measure and mitigate pollutants. Some examples where nanotechnology is already benefiting the environment include battery recycling, radioactive waste cleanup, oil spill remediation, and desalination. However, nanopollution from nanomaterials production is a potential negative impact that requires further research to understand environmental and health effects. More study is also needed to identify and manage high risk nanomaterials.

1. Nanotechnology and the
Environment
Kamran Habib
Centre of Nanoscience and Nanotechnology
Jamia Millia Islamia
New Delhi
October 8, 2019

2. What is Nanotechnology?
Nanotechnology is the creation and use of
materials, devices, and systems through the
control of matter on the nanometer-length
scale—at the level of atoms, molecules, and
supramolecular structures. The essence of
nanotechnology is the ability to work at these
levels to generate larger structures with
fundamentally new properties and molecular
organization.

3. Nanotechnology and it’s future
Nanotechnology will make important
contributions to science and engineering for the
next century and will fundamentally
restructure many current technologies.
Control of matter on the nanoscale already plays
an important role in scientific disciplines as
diverse as physics, chemistry, materials science,
biology, medicine, engineering, and computer
simulation.

4. Nanotechnology and the
environment
Nanotechnology has the potential to significantly affect
environmental protection through understanding and control of
emissions from a wide range of sources, development of new
“green” technologies that minimize the production of
undesirable byproducts, and remediation of existing waste
sites and polluted water sources.
Nanotechnology has the potential to remove the finest
contaminants from water supplies and air as well as to
continuously measure and mitigate pollutants in the
environment.

5. Current effect on Environment
A number of environmental and energy
technologies already have benefited substantially
from nanotechnology in the areas of reduced
waste and improved energy efficiency,
environmentally benign composite structures,
waste remediation, and energy conversion.

6. Some examples of
Nanotechnology applications that
benefit the environment

7. Nanotechnology could make battery
recycling economically attractive
• Many batteries still contain heavy metals such
as mercury, lead, cadmium, and nickel,
which can contaminate the environment and
pose a potential threat to human health when
batteries are improperly disposed of.
• Researchers have managed to recover pure
zinc oxide nanoparticles from spent Zn-
MnO2 batteries alkaline batteries.

8. Used cathode particles from
spent lithium ion batteries are
recycled and regenerated to
work as good as new.
(Image: David Baillot/UC San
Diego Jacobs School of
Engineering)

9. Nanomaterials for radioactive waste
clean-up in water
• Scientists are working on nanotechnology
solution for radioactive waste cleanup,
specifically the use of titanate nanofibers as
absorbents for the removal of radioactive ions
from water.
• Researchers have also reported that the unique
structural properties of titanate nanotubes and
nanofibers make them superior materials for
removal of radioactive cesium and iodine
ions in water.

10. Nanotechnology-based solutions for
oil spills
• Although the application of nanotechnology
for oil spill cleanup is still in its nascent
stage, it offers great promise for the future.
• In the last couple of years, there has been
particularly growing interest worldwide in
exploring ways of finding suitable solutions
to clean up oil spills through use of
nanomaterials.

11. Water applications
The potential impact areas for nanotechnology in
water applications are divided into three
categories –
• Treatment and remediation
• Sensing and detection
• Pollution prevention
and the improvement of desalination
technologies is one key area thereof.

12. Nanotechnology-based water
purification devices have the potential
to transform the field of
desalination, for instance by
using the ion concentration polarization
phenomenon
A scalable graphene-based membrane for
producing clean water. (Image: Aaron Morelos-
Gomez)

13. Negative impact of Nanotechnology
on environment
One of the major negative impact of nanotechnology on environment is
Nanopollution.
Nanopollution : It is a generic name for waste generated
by Nanodevices or during the nanomaterials manufacturing process.
Ecotoxicological impacts of nanoparticles and the potential
for bioaccumulation in plants and microorganisms is a subject of
current research, as nanoparticles are considered to present novel
environmental impacts.
Of the US$710 million spent in 2002 by the U.S. government on
nanotechnology research, $500,000 was spent on environmental
impact assessments.

14. Things to be kept in mind
• The researchers should identify and manage
nanomaterials which have the greatest risk to
the environment.
• We should evaluate our ability to minimize
hazards and exposure to high risk
nanoparticles.
• We should also evaluate present risk
management plans for all nanomaterials.

15. As we all no that the field of nanotechnology is very
young and still there are lots of research going on, due
to which there is almost no published literature on the
effects of nanoparticles on environmental species . So in
the near future we will come to know more about the
positive and negative effects of Nanotechnology on
environment.