review · Separations
This review examines electrocoagulation (EC) as a sustainable method for purifying wastewater by removing inorganic pollutants and recovering valuable nutrients. Water pollution from persistent, toxic inorganic substances like chromium, zinc, lead, and arsenic poses significant environmental and public health risks. EC effectively removes these contaminants and can also recover nutrients such as nitrogen and phosphorus, which are valuable as plant fertilisers and support a circular economy. The paper discusses advances in EC technology, including factors influencing contaminant removal like pH, time, power, and concentration. It also addresses limitations, such as high power consumption and electrode deterioration, and explores emerging strategies for process optimisation.
This research highlights a method to clean polluted water and reclaim valuable resources, addressing environmental concerns and promoting sustainable practices. It offers a way to mitigate the dangers of toxic inorganic pollutants and turn waste into useful products like fertilisers, supporting a circular economy and improving public health.
This review identifies an applied technology for wastewater treatment and nutrient recovery, which could be used by water utilities and agricultural businesses. The recovered nitrogen and phosphorus could be commercialised as fertilisers, supporting a circular economy. The discussion of limitations and optimisation suggests ongoing development to improve efficiency and reduce costs for wider adoption, indicating a technology in the applied research and development phase.
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Water pollution is a major concern due to its detrimental effects on the environment and public health. The particular danger of inorganic pollutants arises from their persistent toxicity and inability to biodegrade. Recently, electrocoagulation (EC) has been demonstrated as an alternative sustainable approach to purifying wastewater due to the increasingly strict pollution prevention rules. In particular, EC has been used to remove inorganic pollutants, such as Cr, Zn, Pb, or As. EC has emerged as a sustainable tool for resource recovery of some inorganic pollutants such as N and P that, when recovered, have value as plant nutrients and are critical in a circular economy. These recovered materials can be obtained from diverse agricultural drainage water and recycled as fertilizers. In this work, a state-of-the-art technique is reviewed describing the advances in contaminant removal and nutrient recovery using EC through an in-depth discussion of the factors influencing the contaminant removal process, including operating pH, time, power, and concentration. Furthermore, limitations of the EC technology are reviewed, including the high-power consumption, fast deterioration of the sacrificial electrodes, and the types of contaminants that could not be efficiently removed. Finally, new emerging constructs in EC process optimization parameters are presented.
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DOI: 10.3390/separations11110320
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