Starch‐Based Materials as a Natural Compound's Application in Water and Wastewater Treatment: A Systematic Review

Abstract Currently, the application of natural materials is a good alternative to prevent secondary damage to humans and the environment. Therefore, in recent years, much attention has been paid to the use of these degradable and environmentally friendly materials to reduce toxicity and treatment costs. As a natural material, starch offers advantages of low cost, flexible modification, abundant presence of hydroxyl functional groups, and eco‐friendly. These configurations make it to a suitable material for remediation purposes, as it has received a great attention for removal of pollutants from water and wastewater, including but not limited to the heavy metals, pharmaceutical, dyes, and even inorganic contaminants. This work, therefore, aims to systematically evaluate starch‐based materials applications in remediation of water and wastewater media using the appropriate search terms from international databases including PubMed, Science Direct and Google Scholar, and through PRISMA checklist. For this, the publications from 1973 to 2021 are searched. In the initial search, 980 articles are found of which 49 articles are included in the study. Then, the performance of the starch‐based materials for every single study as the pollutant(s) involved is summarized and discussed. The advantages and disadvantages of such application are extracted and a perspective is presented accordingly. This comprehensive review shows that the starch‐based derivatives’ can be potential options in water and wastewater treatment purposes, especially those modified. However, some limitations should be overcoming before scaling of the results.