Recent trends in biomaterials for photodegradation of dyes

Synthetic dyes are highly carcinogenic and can cause life-threatening problems. These dyes are part of products of daily use, including textile mills, leather industries, common accessories and furniture. Dyes are released in the environment and water as a major effluent, due to different anthropogenic and industrial activities. The accumulation of nondegradable dyes in environment poses serious health threats. Different conventional methods have been reported so far as being used to degrade the dyes from environment. Photodegradation is one of the most promising, cost-effective and facile methods to remove dyes. Recently, biomaterials have been used as a new frontier to degrade dyes by heterogeneous photodegradation, and it has appeared as the most emerging technology due to its cost effectiveness. This chapter deals with photodegradation of dyes via biomaterials. The photodegradation properties with recent advances and trends are discussed. It includes a brief understanding of photodegradation, the potential use of biomaterials and their composites in the photodegradation of synthetic and toxic dyes. Furthermore, we conclude with further prospects to improve the efficiency of biomaterials used for removal of dyes.