Industrial Chemistry and Water Treatment

Electrochemistry

Electrochemistry is defined as the branch of chemistry that examines the phenomena resulting from combined chemical and electrical effects that cause electrons to move. It refers to electrochemical processes involving electron transfer to or from a molecule or ion changing its oxidation position. The loss of electrons from an atom or molecule is termed as oxidation, and also the gain of electrons is reduction. A reaction is categorized as oxidation and reduction depending on the direction of electron transfer. The principles of cells are wont to make electrical batteries. In science and technology, battery could be a device that stores energy and makes it available in an electrical form. Electrochemistry is too vital through a broad range of important technological applications. For example, batteries are important not only in storing energy for mobile devices and vehicles, but also for load levelling to enable the use of renewable energy conversion technologies. This field covers -
Electrolytic processes – Reactions during which chemical changes occur on the passage of an electrical current.
Galvanic or voltaic processes - Chemical reactions that results in the production of electrical energy. Large number of chemicals available in the market but electrochemical synthesis of chemicals has been limited to a narrow spectrum. The reasons for this are  previously attributed to a lag in the education of chemists and engineers in electrochemistry and electrochemical engineering, a shortage of suitable resources for cell construction, and most importantly the prohibitive costs involved (in many cases) in electrochemical synthesis. However, over the past 40 years, there have been significant developments in electrochemical synthesis and methods3 due to the advances in materials science and nanotechnology, the development of in-situ spectroscopy techniques and progress in multi-scale modelling. As a result, it’s timely to revisit some industrial electrochemical processes and to introduce for example new economic opportunities for the electrochemical manufacturing of chemicals.