Recent advances of reactive electroseparation systems for water treatment and selective resource recovery

Electroseparations (e.g., electrofiltration, electrosorption, electrodeposition, electroprecipitation, electrocoagulation) have received growing interest toward the selective recovery of value-added compounds from wastewater. The coupling of electroseparations with electroconversion (e.g., advanced electrooxidation, organic electrosynthesis) has given rise to new materials and systems that uniquely combine reactivity and selectivity. These new reactive separation platforms offer several synergistic advantages beyond each individual component, such as (i) mass transport enhancement, (ii) increased removal rates and yields toward biorecalcitrant pollutants, and the (iii) improvement of recovery and regeneration of porous electrosorptive materials. Significant efforts have recently been devoted to the functionalization of tunable conductive materials for enhanced selectivity (e.g., by leveraging redox-electrochemistry), and in parallel, hybrid systems designs are emerging that enhance efficiency and modularity. Going forward, a major challenge remains to evaluate the efficiency of reactive electroseparation schemes in real effluent contexts and to test the lifetime and viability of these electrochemical systems at larger scales.