Unravelling the emerging carcinogenic contaminants from industrial waste water for prospective remediation by electrocoagulation – A review

The need of the hour relies on finding new but sustainable ways to curb rising pollution levels. The accelerated levels of urbanization and increase in population deplete the finite resources essential for human sustenance. In this aspect, water is one of the non-renewable sources that is running out very fast and is polluted drastically day by day. One way of tackling the problem is to reduce the pollution levels by decreasing the usage of chemicals in the process, and the other is to find ways to reuse or reduce the contaminants in the effluent by treatment methods. Most of the available water recycling or treatment methods are not sustainable. Some of them even use toxic chemicals in the processing steps. Treatment of organic wastes from industries is a challenging task as they are hard to remove. Electrocoagulation is one of the emerging water treatment technologies that is highly sustainable and has a comparatively cheaper operating cost. Being a broad-spectrum treatment process, it is suitable for treating the most common water pollutants ranging from oils, bacteria, heavy metals, and others. The process is also straightforward, where electrical current is used to coagulate the contaminates. The presence of carcinogens in these waste water increases the need for its treatment towards further use. The present investigation is made as an extensive analysis of the emerging carcinogens and their various sources from process industries, especially in the form of organic waste and their removal by electrocoagulation and its coupled techniques. The paper also aims to ascertain why the electrocoagulation technique may be a better alternative compared with other methods for the removal of carcinogens in organic wastewater, an analysis which has not been explored before. [Display omitted] •Types & categories of water pollution are clearly discussed.•Effects of organic wastes and industries producing wastes are highlighted.•Harmful carcinogens present in the industrial waste water are listed.•Application of electrocoagulation in different process industries are investigated.•Removal of metals from waste water using electrocoagulation are discoursed.