Strategies based on silica monoliths for removing pollutants from wastewater effluents: A review

Silica monoliths have been used for more than half a century in a wide variety of applications, such as stationary phases for microextraction fibers, capillary columns for chromatography, in the encapsulation of biomolecules for affinity chromatography and for microfluidic or microarray chips and, more recently, and less well known for wastewater treatment. The main objective of this review article is to specifically overview the strategies that use silica monoliths for the removal of chemical pollutants from wastewater effluents or prepared solutions. The discussion of advantages and drawbacks of such strategies will be supported with the main studies carried out so far which have been performed in laboratory environment only. The application and potential research interest in several strategies using composites and biocomposites based silica monoliths as cleaning systems are also discussed. •Strategies based on silica monoliths for removing chemical pollutants are reviewed.•Discussion of the application and potential interest of using composites and biocomposites based on silica monoliths.•The main studies carried out using composites and biocomposites are presented and discussed.•Composites/biocomposites have been revealed to be efficient for removal/degradation of specific chemical compounds.•Advantages and drawbacks of using silica monoliths for removing pollutants are summarized.