Advances in electrochemical-based treatment of microplastics in wastewater: removal performance and influencing factors

Microplastics, as persistent organic pollutants, are widely present in aquatic environments. Owing to their small size and tendency to adsorb other pollutants, traditional wastewater treatment processes struggle to effectively remove them, and they pose an increasingly serious threat to ecosystems and human health. Therefore, efficient, stable, and feasible treatment technologies to effectively collect or separate microplastics from wastewater are urgently needed. The continuous development of electrochemical technology, with its advantages of high efficiency, ease of operation, and controllability, has garnered significant attention and is being explored as a viable solution to water treatment challenges. Electrochemical technologies have also demonstrated good removal efficiency and potential prospects with regard to their application to remove microplastics from wastewater; however, systematic implementation guidelines to facilitate its commercialization are lacking. This review summarizes existing research on the use of five electrochemical technologies (electrocoagulation, electrooxidation, electroreduction, bioelectrochemistry, and electrosorption) for microplastics removal, and discusses their removal performance, influencing factors, and degradation mechanisms when used to treat microplastics in wastewater. Additionally, the advantages of combining electrochemical technologies with other methods for efficient microplastics removal are briefly described, with the goal of assessing the practical feasibility and future application trends of electrochemical methods for removing microplastics from wastewater.