▎ 摘　　要

Conventional treatment technologies are inefficient in mineralizing emerging contaminants such as pharma-ceuticals and personal care products (PPCPs), leading to their presence even in treated effluents. Such con-taminants dwell in the water bodies for long, causing endocrine disruption and chronic toxicity to human and aquatic life. In this study, a novel three-dimensional graphene-coated nickel foam (Gr-NF) is explored for its performance in electro-peroxone process for the removal of ibuprofen, a non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drug and a model pharmaceutical contaminant. Furthermore, a benchmark study comparing the relative performance of the Gr-NF electrode, with a commonly used Reticulated Vitreous Carbon (RVC) electrode was carried out. In addition, the performance of electro-peroxone with two other common oxidation processes, viz. electrolysis and ozonation were critically compared. The Gr-NF electrode was subjected to several material characterization techniques to understand its structural and chemical characteristics. Typically, center dot OH radical generation can be achieved only during electro-peroxone. Here, interestingly, we observed center dot OH generation even during electrolysis using the Gr-NF electrode. Minerali-zation capacity of Gr-NF was found to be about two times that of RVC. Moreover, 87.0% mineralization of ibuprofen was achieved within 60 minutes. Mechanisms for in situ center dot OH generation are proposed. Degradation by-products of ibuprofen, along with their mechanisms were studied. The Gr-NF-based electro-peroxone system was also investigated for the treatment of a real pharmaceutical wastewater where it showed promise as a multi-pronged treatment strategy, with 75.0% TOC mineralization within 8 h, 99.7% disinfection within 5 minutes, 85.9% of decolorization, 78.0% of TSS removal within 180 minutes, and 85.0% removal of turbidity within 5 h. The study proves the enhanced performance of Gr-NF electrode over conventional ones such as RVC, along with enhanced capability of center dot OH radical generation, which makes it an attractive electrode for use in electro-peroxone.