An Ontology-Based Framework for Semantic Integration and Interoperable Assessment of Green-Synthesized Nanomaterials for Environmental Remediation

Green-synthesized nanomaterials have emerged as promising candidates for environmentally sustainable remediation; however, experimental evidence describing their synthesis routes, physicochemical properties, remediation performance, and sustainability-relevant attributes remains fragmented, inconsistently reported, and difficult to integrate across studies. This work addresses this challenge by proposing an ontology-based semantic framework for the interoperable integration of green-synthesized nanomaterials, contaminants, and remediation processes, incorporating explicit provenance metadata and structured sustainability descriptors. The ontology was developed using the Linked Open Terms (LOT) methodology and implemented in OWL 2 DL, with selective alignment to established vocabularies including eNanoMapper, ChEBI, ENVO, and PROV-O. Adsorption and photocatalysis were instantiated as representative remediation mechanisms to evaluate the framework’s capacity to accommodate structurally distinct processes. Logical reasoning and SHACL-based validation were applied to assess semantic consistency, provenance traceability, and data completeness. The results demonstrate that the proposed ontology effectively integrates heterogeneous experimental data within a unified, FAIR-compliant semantic framework, supports conservative and provenance-aware inference, and enables comparative analysis across mechanistically diverse remediation systems without structural modification. This ontology-based approach provides a robust foundation for sustainability-aware knowledge integration in environmental nanotechnology and establishes the basis for future extensions involving data quality assessment and explainable AI-driven analysis.