A novel advanced oxidation process --wet electrocatalytic oxidation (WEO) was studied with p-nitrophenol as model pollutant and β-PbO 2 electrode as the anode. Compared with the effect of the individual wet air oxidation (WAO) and electrochemical oxidation (EO), the effect of WEO showed synergistic effect on COD removal under the conditions of temperature 160℃, C=1000 mg·L −1 , P N 2 =0.50 MPa, P O 2 =0.9 MPa, current density = 3 mA·cm −2 , Na 2 SO 4 3 g·L −1 . And the synergistic factor got the best value of 0.98 within 120 min after 180 min treatment. The synergistic factor was studied after 120 min treatment at 100℃, 120℃, 140℃ and 160℃, and the effect of 120℃ was the best with the value of 1.26. Possible mechanism for the synergistic effect was discussed based on the analysis of free-radical generation and intermediates detected by HPLC and GC/MS. wet air oxidation, electrochemical oxidation, wet electrocatalytic oxidation, synergistic effectThe wastewater containing high concentrated aromatic compounds cannot be treated effectively by conventional biological or physical-chemical treatment due to their structure stability, bio-resistance and strong toxicity. It has been one of the key technical difficulties in wastewater treatment for a long time in China. At present, wet air oxidation (WAO) and electrochemical oxidation (EO) are two ways dealing with organic wastewater [1][2][3][4][5] .WAO is an effective method dealing with many types of high concentrated organic wastewaters with some equipments application in industry [1,2] , but the application of this process is limited for the harsh operational conditions of high temperature and high pressure [1,6] . Recently, catalytic wet air oxidation (CWAO) is extensively studied to lower the operational conditions and some improvements have been achieved. But the introduction of catalysts, the applicability and toxicity of the catalysts should be carefully considered [7] . So, CWAO is still far from solution due to the second pollution and the declination of treatment efficiency. Sound processes with less rigorous operational conditions, being more efficient for high-concentrated organic wastewater treatments without second pollution are urgently required.Electrochemical oxidation (EO) is a newly advanced oxidation process and has been one of the key technologies of wastewater treatment for its high efficiency, being friendly to environment and easy facility. But present researches showed that it could only work well to the organic wastewater of low concentrated and less efficiency to that of high concentrated [8,9] .Based on the review of these two technologies, this paper tries to combine the advantages of WAO and EO at relative moderate conditions, and uses wet electro-