Mass-producible low-cost flexible electronic fabrics for azo dye wastewater treatment by electrocoagulation

Electrocoagulation is progressively becoming an ecologically friendly water treatment method owing to its lack of secondary pollution, high active ingredient concentration, high treatment effectiveness, simple equipment, and simplicity of automated control implementation. Herein, electrocoagulation is offered as a method for treating wastewater containing azo dyes using a revolutionary flexible electronic fabric that can be mass-producible at a reasonable price. A computer-controlled machine embroiders 316L stainless steel fiber (316L SSF) onto an insulating fabric to manufacture a flexible electronic device of cathode and anode with a monopolar arrangement on the fabric surface. Using methyl orange (MO) solution to simulate azo dye wastewater, the decolorization rate of 500 ml MO reached 99.25% under the conditions of 50 mg·L −1 initial mass concentration, 120 min electrolysis time, 15 mA·g −1 current density, 1 cm electrode spacing, 0.1 mol·L −1 NaCl, pH 7.6, 200 r·min −1 rotational speed of the stirrer, and 22−25 °C room temperature. In addition, it is feasible to embroider flexible electronic fabrics with varied sizes and numbers of electrodes based on the amount of treated sewage to increase the degradation rate, which has significant practical application value.