Progress, Gaps, and Opportunities in Electrocatalytic Oxidation of Wastewater: A Review

This review synthesizes recent advances in electrocatalytic oxidation (ECO) for wastewater (WW) treatment, spanning model systems and real streams. It compares direct and mediator-assisted oxidation pathways across key anode families and summarizes reactor configurations used in published case studies, including flow electrolyzers. The review identifies persistent barriers to cross-study comparison-including non-standard reporting of full/half-cell potentials, current density, geometric area/electrochemical active surface area, current efficiency, energy per mass of organic compounds removed or per treated volume, pH/supporting electrolytes, and time on stream - and provides key performance indicators and a benchmarking protocol to standardize evaluation. It further highlights differences in ECO performance between model and real WW and discusses its integration as a pretreatment or polishing step within existing treatment processes. Addressing reporting inconsistencies and expanding long-term testing on real streams will improve reproducibility and accelerate deployment of ECO from laboratory studies to demonstration-scale applications.