“…Several advanced techniques exist for the reduction of the environmental impact of industrial wastewater containing heavy metal ions, such as reverse osmosis (Gupta et al 2012), advanced oxidation (Oller et al 2011), ion exchange (Da̧browski et al 2004), solvent extraction (Hall et al 1990), membrane filtration processes (Blöcher et al 2003;Mavrov et al 2006;Paez-Hernandez et al 2005), GAC/O 3 oxidation (Qian (Zhang et al 2012), lime softening (Varga et al 2013), coagulation/flocculation (Amuda et al 2006), electrochemical processes (Ahmad et al 2012), electrocoagulation (Balasubramanian et al 2009;Ratna Kumar et al 2004), chitosan graphene oxide nanocomposites (Shahzad et al 2017) and chemical precipitation (Rathinam et al 2010). These treatment methods have some limitations, which include highenergy requirements, production of oxidation by-products, regeneration requirements during ion exchange, bulk toxic sludge generation in flocculation/coagulation methods, short half-life in ozonation and membrane fouling during the filtration process.…”