Electrochemical reactor with carbon membrane electrodes for efficient phenol removal via anode and cathode synergism

Abstract Current electrochemical membrane reactors (EMRs) focus on half-cell reactions, which limits their efficiency. Herein, an EMR-P with full-cell reactions was constructed using a carbon membrane (CM) as the cathode and a TiO2-loaded CM as the anode. Noteworthy, this proposed innovative design...

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Bibliographic Details
Main Authors: Zishang Chen, Hong Wang, Yuxuan Zhu, Xiaoping Chen, Shuanglin Gui, Aijing Ma, Jianxin Li
Format: Article
Language:English
Published: Nature Portfolio 2025-01-01
Series:npj Clean Water
Online Access:https://doi.org/10.1038/s41545-024-00432-4
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Summary:Abstract Current electrochemical membrane reactors (EMRs) focus on half-cell reactions, which limits their efficiency. Herein, an EMR-P with full-cell reactions was constructed using a carbon membrane (CM) as the cathode and a TiO2-loaded CM as the anode. Noteworthy, this proposed innovative design has no ion-exchange membrane and consists of two permeates for anodic electrocatalytic and cathodic electro-Fenton processes. Results showed that the removal rates of phenol and COD by EMR-P were 99.2% and 93.9%, respectively, with energy consumption of 0.43 kWh kg COD–1, which were superior to those of other EMRs. Such superior performance of EMR-P was attributed to the synergism of electro-Fenton and electrocatalytic oxidation, as well as the high adsorption property of CM, which promoted $${1\atop}{\rm{O}}_{2}$$ 1 O 2 generation and COD removal. Additionally, the cathode made more contribution to the COD removal (59.0%) than the anode (41.0%). Overall, this work provides several insights into the design of EMRs for cleaning industrial wastewater.
ISSN:2059-7037