On the Performance of Free Radicals Combined Electrocoagulation Treatment Processes

The electrocoagulation (EC) combined treatment processes have shown promising performances in which the removal of pollutants from industrial wastewater was greatly enhanced. The integration of a free radical producing step with EC has been considered as one of these new combinations that show synergy and improvements in the overall cleaning process performance. This review is devoted to discuss and analyze references on free radicals-assisted EC processes. Different combinations of free radical mechanisms were cited in the literature during the last two decades. They included ozone, advanced oxidation and ultrasound energy-assisted EC. It was noted that most of those studies were lab-scale processes that used synthetic wastewaters rather than real wastewaters. In addition the performances of those combined processes were improved compared to the EC process alone. This review considers the main parameters of free radical EC processes such as mechanisms, kinetic models, scale-up and cost estimation. Many concluding remarks were stated to give insights for possible future investigations. It seems from the results that the ozone-assisted EC is the most efficient combination since its removal efficiency is high in most applications. On the other hand, the combination of ultrasonic energy with EC was reported to reduce electrode passivation.