The demand of clean decontaminated water supply is increasing with the increase in the population of the world. As a result, the global need for more economic and efficient technologies for water remediation is also rising. The entry of nanotechnology into the wastewater treatment engineering exemplified a noteworthy advancement, and nanoparticles (NPs) have been exhaustively studied for possible remediation applications. However, the wastewater treatment with dispersed NP suspensions is still inadequate and to some extent antagonistic on the grounds of health and environmental safety, even as NP reaction mechanisms, ecotoxicity, and their transport properties are quiet under exploration. Theoretically, the development of porous nanocomposites containing nanoparticles to overcome these concerns offers the next logical step for developing functional nanomaterials and nanocomposites that are better investigated in the wastewater industry. This purpose of this review is to provide an overview of the range of carbon nanocomposites containing NP of semiconductor photocatalysts being technologically advanced, at the same time highlighting their limitations in practical uses. The review also briefly covers what further improvements are needed to optimize existing nanocomposite-mediated water remediation processes to successively accomplish viable maturity. © 2018, Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd.