Abstract
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•The persistence of toxic substances causes threats to the living ecosystems.•Effective remediation of contaminated environment is of supreme interest.•Nanoparticle-stabilized surfactant foams are effective to remediate hydrocarbons.
Contaminated environments posed serious threats to the ecosystems and their living beings. Suitable preventive approaches should be adopted for effective remediation of contaminated environments to remove or lower their health and environmentally-related hazardous aspects. Petroleum or traces of petroleum contamination from oil fields and refineries to exposed soil in the form of gasoline, petrol, diesel, and used motor oil are a rich source of potential damage to the environment. Conventional ways of treatment and management of hydrocarbon are complicated, insufficient, and expensive. Herein, we reviewed a smart approach for the removal of petroleum source contamination from exposed soil using environment-friendly chemical surfactants and nanoscale surfactant system. The host/guest complexes formation of surfactants with the hydrocarbons (hydrophobic contaminants) of soil and water by the encapsulation mechanism of hydrophobes into the (micelles) a self-assembly aggregation of surfactants. Recently, surfactants stabilized by nanoparticles (NPs) acquired more importance and popularity over surfactant alone. The persistence of diverse hydrocarbon-based contaminants and the mechanisms of removal using pristine surfactants or NP-stabilized surfactant foams are discussed with suitable examples. In summary, herein, an effort has been made to present the notable potentialities of pristine surfactants and NP-stabilized surfactant foams to remediate the petroleum hydrocarbon contaminated soil for a greener and sustainable ecosystem.