With the rapid development of the social economy, the technology of industry has greatly improved, and it has indeed produced a lot of economic benefits. However, at the same time, industrial wastewater has increased exponentially, which has brought a huge burden on the environment and affected people's daily water quality as well. It is well known that the characteristics of industrial wastewater are mainly manifested in large discharge, complex composition and severe pollution. Therefore, there are great difficulties in treating industrial wastewater1. China's initial implementation of industrial wastewater treatment has achieved certain experience so far. The effectiveness of wastewater treatment capacity is obvious. It can meet a wide range of industrial wastewater treatment on the basis, but the treatment technology is still immature. In some small and medium-sized factories, in order to save money, the wastewater treatment process is simplified, and the sewage treatment is not done enough. After discharge, the surrounding water bodies and the environment will still be polluted. Therefore, developing techniques with low-energy consumption and high efficiency is urgently needed2.
Pollutants can be removed from wastewater using electrochemical treatment, and it is an environmentally friendly technology3,4,5.In particular, it has received more and more attention in environmental pollution control. Although electrochemical technology started late in China's sewage treatment, its development speed is extremely rapid6.It has been applied in many fields of environmental chemical engineering up to now7.This method exploits an electrochemical cell with a cathode and an anode that is leached in the effluent. The utilize of an electric current reasons redox reactions at the electrodes8.In the past a few years, the bio-electrochemical coupling process has emerged and develops fast since it can deeply treat wastewater9,10, and is widely used in the removal of pollutants in sewage due to its high efficiency, low consumption and relatively low cost. This technique is quite mature in western countries. In the past decade, some researches have been reported on the bio-electrochemical technology used to degrade pollutants in wastewater. For example, Ricardo A et al. used electrochemical-bio-coupling to treat industrial wastewater containing 5-amino-6-methyl-2-benzimidazolone and found that the pollutants can be removed effectively11.Yu et al designed a special centrifugal electrode reactor for the electrochemical treatment of wastewater including heavy metals. To make better the treatment of mimeticed heavy metal wastewater operating an aluminium anode12.Therefore, the research of electrochemical coupling technology in wastewater treatment is more and more important. In the meanwhile, the traditional 2D-electrochemical has some shortcomings, such as low effective current and small effective surface area, while three-dimensional electrochemical technology which means that additional component is added into the process can make up for these shortcomings11. Because of the many advantages of the three-dimensional (3-D) electrochemical oxidation reactor over the conventional electrochemical oxidation reactor, the 3D electrochemistry method has received much attention these days13.
Moreover, in recent years, the concept of “waste utilization” is highly valued in the field of water treatment14,15,16. Among them, Steel slag, a representative industrial waste, has been well utilized in some areas. For example, its good adsorption and sedimentation performance can remove pollutants from water and soil obviously17,18.The annual output of steel slag, a by-product of steelmaking in the world, is as high as 50 million tons19,20, and the number of steel slag that can be reasonably utilized in China is low and no more than 20%. Therefore, the rational use of steel slag is very urgent21At present, the abundant metal resources have been neglected by the research process of steel slag, which leads to the great limitation of steel slag application in the field of water treatment. Studies have shown that the electro-Fenton process occurs in the three-dimensional electrode of steel slag because of the presence of Fe element, so it can effectively degrade organic matter22,23,24.In particular, some organic residues after secondary treatment of refinery wastewater are biologically toxic, and three-dimensional electrode technology can effectively select organic matter in the deep treatment process to better degrade organic matter25.In addition, the presence of Fe element makes the steel slag particles magnetic, which provides convenience for recycling of the technology.
Based on the above description, In the present work, the purpose of this study is to improve the treatment efficiency of secondary effluent by first using a biological process as the pretreatment of wastewater26 and then combining with the three-dimensional electrode to form an electrochemical reaction to deeply treat the secondary effluent. We will choose the steel slag as a component of the particle electrode, which can better enhance the degradation efficiency of COD and TN mainly in the electrochemical reactor. It is expected that waste utilization of industrial waste can be effectively achieved while both reaction time and cost are reduced during the process.