A Review of Pulsed Power Systems for Degrading Water Pollutants Ranging From Microorganisms to Organic Compounds

Water quality improvement and collecting safe water are two of the paramount concerns in today's world. Numerous water treatment and pollutant removal processes are introduced that vary with the type of pollutants. Among the proposed pollutant degradation methods, pulsed power is one of the effective methods that can be applied not only to degrade a wide range of contaminants but also to address the environmental issues associated with water treatment chemicals. The effectiveness of the pulsed power technology in water treatment was studied for a wide range of pollutants including microorganisms, nutrient pollution, emerging pollutants, and organic pollutants. This paper presents a review of pulsed power systems developed for organic and inorganic pollutants degradation in different water treatment applications. Also, it presents the effectiveness of several factors like the electrical characteristics of the pulse voltages and treatment time on degradation rates of different pollutants.