Abstract
Increasing industrialization and population have intensified the global scarcity of clean water resources, necessitating advanced wastewater treatment technologies that are efficient and economically viable. Among advanced materials, magnetic Graphene-based nanomaterials (NMs), owing to their exceptional physicochemical properties, facile separation, and catalytic efficiency show significant potential in removing a wide range of contaminants, including dyes, heavy metals, organic pollutants, and persistent poly- and perfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS). These materials are employed in catalytic pathways including photocatalysis, electrocatalysis, Fenton-like, and oxidative processes, offering versatile pathways for pollutant degradation. This review critically evaluates magnetic graphene NMs for wastewater treatment focusing on catalytic mechanisms and pollutant-specific interactions, with higher efficiency reported for photocatalysis coupled with reactive species formation. Literature in this review was compiled through a comprehensive literature review of 200 peer-reviewed publications from 2015 to 2026, demonstrates that these materials generally exhibit superior adsorption capacities, faster reaction kinetics, efficient magnetic separation, and excellent regeneration compared with conventional adsorbents. Articles were screened for relevance, methodological rigor, pollutant removal performance, and approach novelty. By integrating these findings, this review highlights current advances (such as single atom catalytic sites on graphene), identifies challenges, and outlines future research directions particularly towards multifunctional, magnetically separable composites with long term stability for practical wastewater treatment.