10091140Development of microbial electrolysis catalysts for low carbon self-sustaining water treatmentClosedInvestment AcceleratorInnovate UKWater treatment is an important function in society, with proper sanitation being responsible for a large part of the progress in quality of life achieved in developed societies in the past two hundred years. This sanitation comes at a substantial cost: to understand the scale of the challenge, consider that in the UK we produce approximately 3.6 billion cubic meters (tonnes) of wastewater every year; this is larger than the flow rate of the river Thames over the same time. The energy consumption associated with cleaning this wastewater is vast, around 3% of all energy used in the UK is spent running the water treatment assets which allow the flow to be cleaned sufficiently to return to the environment. At Wastewater Fuels we are developing a technology called a Microbial Electrolysis Cell (MEC) which can convert the waste component in wastewater straight into hydrogen or electricity and make the cleaning process pay for itself. It is possible that with sufficient technical progress wastewater treatment can become energy positive, meaning energy would be generated by the process instead of consumed and the energy added to the grid instead of being a cost to society. The energy self-sustaining nature of this process would also reduce the logistical burden of water treatment, improving energy and water security for the UK. Achieving this change to water treatment requires improvements and cost reductions to the components of the MEC system. In particular, types of materials called catalysts; these accelerate the breakdown of the waste and increase production of hydrogen, improving energy return and water treatment. This project will support a team of scientists and engineers to build and validate a set of test rigs which can be used to predict the performance of components at the larger scale. These will then be used for rapid screening of candidate materials and methods to produce and new catalysts. These catalysts will cost less, enhance hydrogen production, and reduce the footprint, and associated capital costs, of our MEC hardware. The project will culminate in the construction and testing of a larger scale device at a wastewater works. This will include testing and analysis of the catalyst durability as well as the quality of the hydrogen produced and cleanliness of the water at this larger scale. Success could create \>7,000 additional powerplants in the UK, generating up to 8.25 TWh of carbon negative energy from sewage per annum.