10106791CWTCH - Contaminated Water To Clean HydrogenClosedLaunchpadInnovate UKGreen hydrogen has the potential to replace large quantities of natural gas demands in "hard to abate" sectors like industrial heat and transport, however it currently faces certain barriers to widespread adoption. One of these is the requirement for highly purified water, with current electrolysers requiring water which has gone through reverse osmosis, incurring high energy demands and creating large amounts of wastewater. To address this, HydroStar and Wales and West Utilities (WWU) are working together on an Ofgem SIF project focussed on low cost, high resiliency hydrogen production using water that is less pure (tap/rain/effluent water etc). This reduces the barrier of water availability and quality for hydrogen production, enabling a more distributed approach to generation including onsite generation from renewables. Electrolysis can also perform electrocoagulation and flotation, which can clump microplastics/heavy metals/other pollutants together and bring them to the water surface to aid in their removal. HydroStar believe this will clean the water enough to produce hydrogen from. Therefore this project targets contaminated or highly polluted water to produce hydrogen, which is complementary but very different from just using impure water. This enables onsite hydrogen production for businesses with high natural gas demands who wish to reduce their carbon footprint without the need for extensive water infrastructure, whilst reducing environmental damage or wastewater treatment costs. The specific wastewater being targeted is industrial manufacturing process wastewater containing elevated levels of contaminants (heavy metals/fibres) which are toxic to the environment. This project in particular will focus on microplastics, which are not yet regulated but are becoming a large issue within human health, being linked to hormonal imbalances and other illnesses, whilst causing fast passivation of electrodes if not removed prior to electrolysis. This project will conduct engineering design and investigation studies to develop hardware to achieve both electrocoagulation of contaminated water and electrolysis of the remaining water post pollutant removal, and then perform small-scale testing for proof-of-concept at 2kW scale. To achieve this, HydroStar and WWU are collaborating with Cardiff University. This pairs the onsite operational and gas handling experience of WWU and the technology development knowledge of HydroStar with the scientific optimisation of Cardiff. The project will result in the development of a decisive new technology which has applications in many different industrial settings which have high gas demands and wastewater produced who wish to reduce their carbon footprint whilst adopting more sustainable processes within their businesses.