| Summary: | Groundwater is commonly used as a drinking water resource all over the world. Therefore, groundwater contamination by toxic metals is an important issue of utmost concern for public health, and several technologies are applied for their effective removal, such as coagulation, ion exchange, adsorption, and membrane applications like reverse osmosis. Adsorption is acknowledged as a simple, effective and economic technology, which has received increased interest recently, despite certain limitations regarding operational applications. The respective scientific efforts have been specifically focused on the development and implementation of novel nano-structured adsorbent materials, which may offer extensive specific surface areas, much higher than the conventional adsorbents, and hence, are expected to present higher removal efficiencies of pollutants. In this paper, the recent developments of nanomaterial applications for arsenic, chromium and uranium removal from groundwaters are critically reviewed. Particularly, the use of novel composite materials, based mainly on hybrid metallic oxide nanoparticles and on composites based on graphene oxide (GO) (i.e., graphene-based hybrids), showed promising evidences to achieve efficient removal of toxic metals from water sources, even in full scale applications.
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