Advanced oxidation comprises a range of similar but different chemical processes aimed at tackling pollution in water, air and soil. Over the past few decades, multidisciplinary research has been carried out to study a broad spectrum of topics such as understanding of process fundamentals, elucidation of kinetics and mechanisms, development of new materials, modelling, process integration and scale-up. This article identifies and discusses certain directions that seem to advance R&D on advanced oxidation for water/wastewater treatment.

Advanced Oxidation Processes (AOPs) are called to fill the gap between the treatability attained by conventional physico-chemical and biological treatments and the day-to-day more exigent limits fixed by environmental regulations. They are particularly important for the removal of anthropogenic pollutants and for this reason, they have been widely investigated in the last decades and even applied in the treatment of many industrial wastewater flows. However, despite the great development reached, AOPs cannot be considered mature yet and there are many new fields worthy of research. Some of them are going to be briefly introduced in this paper, including hybrid processes, heterogeneous semiconductor photocatalysis, sulphate-radical oxidation and electrochemical advanced oxidation for water/wastewater treatment. Moreover, the use of photoelectrochemical processes for energy production is discussed. The work ends with some perspectives that can be of interest for the ongoing and future research.

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