contaminants present in the water (Mills and Le Hunte 1997). The photocatalytic
based degradation is effective and has tremendous potential for future with water
remediation. Hence, researchers devoted considerable efforts towards new material
development, new combination (sonolysis with catalysis), fabrication methods,
performance enhancement, increase active sites using nano, deep understanding of
mechanism of degradation, make it commercially viable and establishing mechanism (Bhatkhande et al. 2002; Dong et al. 2015; Khin et al. 2012; Qu et al. 2012;
Thatai et al. 2014).
Heterogenous catalysis has potential to become the solution for environmental
remediation. Since the water remediation is existing all over earth, the water
remediation technology should be addressed commercially (Chirik and Morris
2015). World population is around 8 billion and to solve the problem at that sale
requires tons of raw materials. If we assume water remediation problem can be
solved by the heterogenous photocatalyst technology, then we should imagine in
terms of material abundance. Otherwise, even after achieving the great efficiency,
with the metal with less abundance does not make any impact in the technology or
world. To put it simply, the water purification technology using heterogeneous
catalyst was developed competitively but the scale up is often overlooked due to
the lack of knowledge on mass production. The scale up-potential of every
photocatalyst involving the water purification should be analyzed carefully. Then
the material can be effectively and efficiently used for solve the environment
remediation problem in global scale. Otherwise, developing the photocatalyst for
the water remediation is mere a scientific interest not a realworld solution. Hence, the
materials availability dictates the use and choice of the materials. Current state-of-art
materials is TiO 2 where titanium has abundance of 0.57% and oxygen abundance is
about 21%. It is apparent that oxygen is good choice of material but titanium is not a
rational choice. Because, if we establish the commercialization based on TiO 2 , we
will end up in the situation of titanium depletion at the middle and eventually failure
of technology. Therefore, the materials abundance is new scarcity and makes the
technology costly for commercialization as well as implementation. Therefore, the
analyzing the material abundance for the materials involved in environmental
remediation is meaningful path for commercialization of the technologies.
The problem of earth abundance in environmental remediation is too great to be
overcome by conventional hit-and-trial approach. That is by taking the random
materials and improving it to the best performance and mostly researchers choose
the readily available materials. By this approach, we end up with least-abundant
materials as state-of-art industrial materials e.g. Ru, Rh, Pd, Pt and more and all
those technology metals are rare and precious metals. It is clear that importance of
abundance is poorly understood among the scientific community and the earth
abundant materials environmental remediation not been widely studied to date.
These materials amount in the earth crust is constant, if the demand increased, the
materials cannot serve intended purpose with the time. In general, research work
starts with milligrams scale and eventually converted to multi-ton chemical
manufacturing. Hence material abundance limits the expansion of technology and
scaling up for the mass market. This situation has the potential to create real hard
7 Earth Abundant Materials for Environmental Remediation and Commercialization
197
based degradation is effective and has tremendous potential for future with water
remediation. Hence, researchers devoted considerable efforts towards new material
development, new combination (sonolysis with catalysis), fabrication methods,
performance enhancement, increase active sites using nano, deep understanding of
mechanism of degradation, make it commercially viable and establishing mechanism (Bhatkhande et al. 2002; Dong et al. 2015; Khin et al. 2012; Qu et al. 2012;
Thatai et al. 2014).
Heterogenous catalysis has potential to become the solution for environmental
remediation. Since the water remediation is existing all over earth, the water
remediation technology should be addressed commercially (Chirik and Morris
2015). World population is around 8 billion and to solve the problem at that sale
requires tons of raw materials. If we assume water remediation problem can be
solved by the heterogenous photocatalyst technology, then we should imagine in
terms of material abundance. Otherwise, even after achieving the great efficiency,
with the metal with less abundance does not make any impact in the technology or
world. To put it simply, the water purification technology using heterogeneous
catalyst was developed competitively but the scale up is often overlooked due to
the lack of knowledge on mass production. The scale up-potential of every
photocatalyst involving the water purification should be analyzed carefully. Then
the material can be effectively and efficiently used for solve the environment
remediation problem in global scale. Otherwise, developing the photocatalyst for
the water remediation is mere a scientific interest not a realworld solution. Hence, the
materials availability dictates the use and choice of the materials. Current state-of-art
materials is TiO 2 where titanium has abundance of 0.57% and oxygen abundance is
about 21%. It is apparent that oxygen is good choice of material but titanium is not a
rational choice. Because, if we establish the commercialization based on TiO 2 , we
will end up in the situation of titanium depletion at the middle and eventually failure
of technology. Therefore, the materials abundance is new scarcity and makes the
technology costly for commercialization as well as implementation. Therefore, the
analyzing the material abundance for the materials involved in environmental
remediation is meaningful path for commercialization of the technologies.
The problem of earth abundance in environmental remediation is too great to be
overcome by conventional hit-and-trial approach. That is by taking the random
materials and improving it to the best performance and mostly researchers choose
the readily available materials. By this approach, we end up with least-abundant
materials as state-of-art industrial materials e.g. Ru, Rh, Pd, Pt and more and all
those technology metals are rare and precious metals. It is clear that importance of
abundance is poorly understood among the scientific community and the earth
abundant materials environmental remediation not been widely studied to date.
These materials amount in the earth crust is constant, if the demand increased, the
materials cannot serve intended purpose with the time. In general, research work
starts with milligrams scale and eventually converted to multi-ton chemical
manufacturing. Hence material abundance limits the expansion of technology and
scaling up for the mass market. This situation has the potential to create real hard
7 Earth Abundant Materials for Environmental Remediation and Commercialization
197