Electrochemical Wastewater Refining: Reactive Separations to Convert Pollutants into Products

Wastewater is an underleveraged resource; it contains pollutants that can be transformed into valuable high-purity products. This presentation will describe recent efforts to realize electrochemical wastewater refining─the use of electrochemical processes to tune and recover specific products from wastewaters─ to valorize aqueous pollutants. We focus in particular on reactive separations, which combine selective separations and electrocatalysis to concentrate pollutants and transform them to high-value products. Specific case studies include electrochemical nitrate reduction to ammonia and other products; selective lithium recovery via electrodialysis; and selective nutrient recovery via electrified ion exchange.