Internal cycling of Fe/Fe within FeO on cathode promotes green degradation of reactive brilliant red X-3B on anode.

Reactive brilliant red X-3B (RBRX-3B) wastewater is difficult to decolourise, not readily biodegradable, and large in quantity. Therefore, the efficient removal of RBRX-3B is crucial. In this paper, a green and efficient electrochemical-electro-Fenton system with FeO-modified carbon felt bag cathode (ECEF-FeO) was set up to degrade RBRX-3B wastewater. Experiments confirmed that the removal of RBRX-3B by ·OH or HO is quite low, and RBRX-3B can be completely oxidised and degraded directly on the anode. Long-cycle experimental data further shows that the degradation efficiency of RBRX-3B on the anode is 100% at 70 min at the reaction rate constants (k) of 0.071 min in ECEF-FeO while that of RBRX-3B on the cathode is only 16.8 ± 0.9%. The generation of ·OH is mainly catalysed through the internal cycling of Fe/Fe within FeO on the cathode, and the generation and annihilation of ·OH on the cathode enhance the oxidation efficiency of the anode, achieving the green and effective removal of RBRX-3B by the anode in ECEF-FeO.