Microplastics have been identified as a kind of emerging pollutant with potential ecological risks, and it is an urgent endeavor to find proper technologies for their remediation. Electrochemical advanced oxidation process (EAOP) technology has exhibited robust performance in the removal of various refractory organic pollutants. In this study, we explored a new remediation strategy for polystyrene microplastics (PS MPs), introducing sodium dodecyl sulfate (SDS) to enhance its degradation performance in boron-doped diamond (BDD) anode adopted EAOP. At first, we investigated the degradation behaviors of SDS in the BDD electrolysis. According to the SDS half-life under various current densities, the SDS addition strategy into EAOP is proposed; that is, supplement SDS to 500 mg/L at every half-life during electrolysis except the last cycle. Results indicated that SDS addition greatly enhanced MPs degradation rate in 72 h of EAOP, about 1.35–2.29 times higher than that in BDD electrolysis alone. The SDS assisted EAOP also led to more obvious changes in the particle size, morphology, and functional groups of the MPs. After treatment, a variety of alkyl-cleavage and oxidation products were identified, which attributed to the strong attack of oxidants (i.e., persulfate) on the MPs. The enhanced persulfate generation and oxidants adsorption on MPs can explain the enhancement effect in the EAOP strategy. Cost analysis results showed the surfactant only accounts for < 0.05% of the total operating costs in the SDS assisted EAOP. In general, the current study provided new insight into the effective way to improve the EAOP efficiency of microplastics.

微塑料已被确定为一种具有潜在生态风险的新兴污染物，迫切需要寻找合适的修复技术。电化学高级氧化工艺 (EAOP) 技术在去除各种难降解有机污染物方面表现出强大的性能。在这项研究中，我们探索了一种新的聚苯乙烯微塑料 (PS MPs) 修复策略，引入十二烷基硫酸钠 (SDS) 以增强其在采用 EAOP 的掺硼金刚石 (BDD) 阳极中的降解性能。首先，我们研究了 BDD 电解中 SDS 的降解行为。根据不同电流密度下SDS的半衰期，提出了EAOP中SDS的添加策略；即除最后一个循环外，电解期间每个半衰期补充SDS至500 mg/L。结果表明，在 72 小时的 EAOP 中，SDS 的添加大大提高了 MPs 的降解率，比单独的 BDD 电解高约 1.35-2.29 倍。SDS 辅助 EAOP 还导致 MP 的粒径、形态和官能团发生更明显的变化。处理后，鉴定出多种烷基裂解和氧化产物，这归因于氧化剂（即过硫酸盐）对 MP 的强烈攻击。增强的过硫酸盐生成和氧化剂在 MP 上的吸附可以解释 EAOP 策略中的增强效果。成本分析结果表明，表面活性剂仅占 SDS 辅助 EAOP 总运营成本的 < 0.05%。总的来说，当前的研究为提高微塑料 EAOP 效率的有效途径提供了新的见解。