Electrochemical removal of pharmaceutical micropollutants from groundwater

Exploring eco-friendly approaches for mitigating pharmaceutical and personal care products in aquatic ecosystems: A sustainability assessment

Global water scarcity is exacerbated by climate change, population growth, and water pollution. Over half of the world's population will be affected by water shortages for at least a month annually by 2050 due toa lack of clean water sources. Even though recycling wastewater helps meet the growing demand, new pollutants, including pharmaceuticals and personal care products (PPCPs), pose a health threat since conventional methods cannot remove them and their environmental monitoring regulations are yet in place. Therefore, the current review aims to investigate and propose eco-friendly technologies for removing PPCPs from wastewater and their implementation strategies for ecosystem safety. Findings indicated the absence of a single wastewater treatment technology that can remove all PPCPs in a single operation. Instead, biotechnological methods are one of the alternatives that can remove PPCPs from aquatic environments. In this context, community involvement and knowledge transfer are identified keys to clean water resources' long-term sustainability.

Wastewater treatment by anodic oxidation in electrochemical advanced oxidation process: Advance in mechanism, direct and indirect oxidation detection methods

Electrochemical Advanced Oxidation Process (EAOP) has been applied to the degradation of refractory pollutants in wastewater due to its strong oxidation capacity, high degradation efficiency, simple operation, and mild reaction. Among electrochemical processes, anodic oxidation (AO) is the most widely used and its mechanism is mainly divided into direct oxidation and indirect oxidation. Direct oxidation means that pollutants are oxidized at the anode by direct electron transfer. Indirect oxidation refers to the generation of active species during the electrolytic reaction, which acts on pollutants. The mechanism of AO process is controlled by many factors, including electrode type, electrocatalyst material, wastewater composition, pH, applied current and voltage levels. It is very important to explore the reaction mechanism of electrochemical treatment, which determines the efficiency of the reaction, the products of the reaction, and the extent of reaction. This paper firstly reviews the current research progress on the mechanism of AO process, and summarizes in detail the different mechanisms caused by influencing factors under common AO process. Then, strategies and methods to distinguish direct oxidation and indirect oxidation mechanisms are reviewed, such as intermediate product analysis, electrochemical test analysis, active species detection, theoretical calculation, and the limitations of these methods are analyzed. Finally some suggestions are put forward for the study of the mechanism of electrochemical advanced oxidation.