In this study, the stainless steel (SS) plate with polypyrrole (PPy) coating was adopted as a modified anode for the electrocoagulation (EC) treatment of electroplating wastewater. It was found that the PPy/PTS (Sodium p-toluene-sulfonate) coated anode could largely prevent the anodic corrosion. With the optimized EC operating parameters as initial pH at 4, EC process at 70 min and applied current density at 30 mA cm⁻², removal efficiency of zinc and nickel from the electroplating wastewater reached 99.9% and 80% respectively. In addition, corrosion inhibition efficiency attained 30% even after 10 repeated EC treatment batches. Furthermore, the successful electro-deposition of coatings with dopants could be characterized by FT-IR, SEM, EDX, and the smallest gaps between the peaks and valleys of PPy/PTS coating could be observed using AFM as well. Notably, PPy was found being adsorbed parallelly to the Fe (1 1 0) surface, whereas adsorption energy of PPy/PTS obtained from molecular dynamic simulation calculation reached the lowest as − 88.87 kJ mol⁻¹ comparing to any other coating group. Therefore, it seemed that the PPy modified SS anode could achieve a relatively high heavy metal removal rate as well as a better protection, and accordingly would help lengthen the lifespan of the steel anode.

在这项研究中，具有聚吡咯（PPy）涂层的不锈钢（SS）板被用作改性阳极，用于电镀废水的电凝（EC）处理。已经发现，涂覆PPy / PTS（对甲苯磺酸钠）的阳极可在很大程度上防止阳极腐蚀。通过优化的EC操作参数，如4时的初始pH值，70分钟的EC过程和30 mA cm ^-2的施加电流密度，电镀废水中锌和镍的去除率分别达到99.9％和80％。此外，即使经过10次重复的EC处理批次，腐蚀抑制效率也达到了30％。此外，可以通过FT-IR，SEM，EDX表征具有掺杂剂的涂层的成功电沉积，并且也可以使用AFM观察到PPy / PTS涂层的峰谷之间的最小间隙。值得注意的是，发现PPy与Fe（1 1 0）表面平行吸附，而通过分子动力学模拟计算获得的PPy / PTS吸附能最低，为-88.87 kJ mol ^-1与任何其他涂料组相比。因此，似乎PPy改性的SS阳极可以实现较高的重金属去除率以及更好的保护，并且因此将有助于延长钢阳极的寿命。