Recent advances on wet air oxidation catalysts for treatment of industrial wastewaters

The pressing need to prevent further damages to environment and deterioration of natural resources urges a global effort to shift from the current money-making industrial policies to a sustainable development pattern. This requires an easy availability of handy and economical technologies for depollution of gas and liquid wastes, "green" industrial manufacturing processes and "zero-emission" energy supply systems. In this context the purification and reuse of industrial wastewaters represents a very critical environmental issue because of the global freshwater shortage, the continuing water resources depletion, and the increasing pollutants release. In this context, the heterogeneous catalytic wet air oxidation (CWAO) is nowadays considered the most promising technology for large-scale application to detoxification of noxious wastewaters, provided that robust, effective and cost-effective catalysts are available. Then, this work provides an overview of mechanistic and kinetic issues of the homogeneous and heterogeneous CWAO of several classes of industrial pollutants, at basis of recent advances on design and development of supported noble metal and oxide catalysts.