Electrochemical regeneration of adsorbents: An Electrochemist's perspective

Electrochemical regeneration of adsorbents has immense potential for water treatment applications, presenting new solutions to tackle the escalating challenges of sustainability. Conductive adsorbents, laden with adsorbate under an applied potential, can lead to regeneration due to electro-desorption and/or electrochemical reactions. Electrochemical regeneration offers many advantages, such as ambient operation, avoidance or minimization of chemicals, contaminant remediation, rapid and in-situ regeneration. These advantages offer the potential for more sustainable, lower cost, water and wastewater treatment processes. In this review, recent work in the field is reviewed, and important research challenges related to the electrochemical processes are identified. In particular, the complex interaction of the coupled electrical, electrochemical, and mass transport processes within a porous bed of adsorbent.