Simultaneous Wastewater treatment and green hydrogen production

Abstract

Hydrogen has been hailed by the EU as the future energy resource and EU aim to 10 million tonnes of green hydrogen by 2030. However, currently only 3.9% of the worldwide hydrogen production comes from water electrolysis. The rest produced using fossil fuels causing green house gas emissions. Green hydrogen production methods for a sustainable future are needed. On the other hand, cleaning of wastewater that are contaminated with persistent pollutants also pose a challenge. In this study, an innovative reactor concept is developed in which simultaneous wastewater treatment and green hydrogen production is realized. Pollutants representing different industrial wastewaters are used in the process such as EDTA, glucose and 2-chloropyridine. We show that the mixture of these pollutants delivers the best hydrogen production performance with 2200ppm/h. We show long term stability of the BiVO4 photoanode in the process.