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Examining Current and Future Applications of Electrocoagulation in Wastewater Treatment

Water 2023 130 citations ? Citation count from OpenAlex, updated daily. May differ slightly from the publisher's own count. Score: 55 ? 0–100 AI score estimating relevance to the microplastics field. Papers below 30 are filtered from public browse.
Yi Mao, Yaqian Zhao, Sarah Cotterill

Summary

This review provides a comprehensive look at electrocoagulation, an electricity-based water treatment technique that can remove a wide range of pollutants including microplastics from wastewater. The analysis covers decades of research showing the method is effective, relatively low-cost, and environmentally friendly compared to chemical treatments. The authors identify microplastic removal as one of the promising newer applications of this technology.

Study Type Environmental

Electrocoagulation (EC) has gained increasing attention as an effective and environmentally friendly technique for purifying water and wastewater. This review provides a comprehensive analysis of the recent literature on EC and identifies new trends and potentials for further research. Initially, the nature of EC and its operating parameters are discussed, while the research trends are analyzed using the Scopus database and VOSviewer software. From 1977 to 2022, 2691 research articles and review papers on EC for water/wastewater treatment were published, with the number of publications increasing from 2 in 1977 to 293 in 2022. In the past five years, most studies focused on treatment performance and the mechanism of EC systems. However, recent emphasis has been placed on combining EC with other treatment processes and addressing emerging pollutants. The innovative applications of EC are highlighted, including the removal of microplastics and per/polyfluoroalkyl substances, the power supply of EC via microbial fuel cells (MFCs) and electro-wetlands (EWs), and the application of power management systems in EC. The review concludes with suggestions for further research to enhance the technology and expand its scope of applications.

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