Sustainable Generation of Sulfate Radicals and Decontamination of Micropollutants via Sequential Electrochemistry

The removal of emerging micropollutants in the aquatic environment remains a global challenge.Conventional routes are often chemically,energetically,and operationally intensive,which decreases their sustainability during applications.Herein,we develop an advanced chemical-free strategy for micropollutants decontamination that is solely based on sequential electrochemistry involving ubiquitous sulfate anions in natural and engineered waters.This can be achieved via a chain reaction initiated by electrocatalytic anodic sulfate(SO_(4)^(2-))oxidation to produce persulfate(S_(2)O_(8)^(2-))and followed by a cathodic persulfate reduction to produce sulfate radicals(SO_(4)^(·-)).These SO_(4)^(·-)are powerful reactive species that enable the unselective degradation of micropollutants and yield SO_(4)^(2-)again in the treated water.The proposed flow-through electrochemical system achieves the efficient degradation(100.0%)and total organic carbon removal(65.0%)of aniline under optimized conditions with a single-pass mode.We also reveal the effectiveness of the proposed system for the degradation of a wide array of emerging micropollutants over a broad pH range and in complex matrices.This work provides the first proof-ofconcept demonstration using ubiquitous sulfate for micropollutants decontamination,making water purification more sustainable and more economical.