The world water resources are contaminated due to discharge of a large number of pollutants from industrial and domestic sources. A variety of a single and multiple units of physical, chemical, and biological processes are employed for pollutants removal from wastewater. Adsorption is the most widely utilized process due to high efficiency, simple procedure and cost effectiveness. This paper reviews the research work carried out on the use of geopolymer materials for the adsorption of heavy metals and dyes. Geopolymers possess good surface properties, heterogeneous microstructure and amorphous structure. The performance of geopolymers in the removal of heavy metals and dyes is reported comparable to other materials. The pseudo-second order kinetics and Langmuir isotherm models mostly fit to the adsorption data suggesting homogeneous distribution of adsorption sites with the formation of monolayer adsorbate on the surface of geopolymers. Adsorption of heavy metals and dyes onto geopolymers is spontaneous, endothermic and entropy driven process. Future research should focus on the enhancement of geopolymer performance, testing on pollutants other than heavy metals and dyes, and verification on real wastewater in continuous operation.

由于从工业和家庭来源排放大量污染物，世界水资源受到污染。物理，化学和生物过程的各种单个和多个单元可用于从废水中去除污染物。吸附由于效率高，操作简单且具有成本效益而成为使用最广泛的过程。本文综述了利用地质聚合物材料吸附重金属和染料的研究工作。地质聚合物具有良好的表面性能，非均质的微观结构和非晶态结构。据报道，地质聚合物在去除重金属和染料方面的性能可与其他材料媲美。拟二级动力学和Langmuir等温线模型最适合于吸附数据，表明吸附位点的均匀分布以及在地质聚合物表面上形成单层被吸附物。重金属和染料在地聚合物上的吸附是自发的，吸热的和熵驱动的过程。未来的研究应集中在增强地聚合物的性能，对重金属和染料以外的污染物进行测试以及对连续运行中的真实废水进行验证。