Contribution to net zero emissions of integrating hydrogen production in wastewater treatment plants.

The reliability of renewable hydrogen supply for off-take applications is critical to the future sustainable energy economy. Integrated water electrolysis can be deployed at distributed municipal wastewater treatment plants (WWTP), creating opportunity for reduction in carbon emissions through direct and indirect use of the electrolysis output. A novel energy shifting process where the co-produced oxygen is compressed and stored to enhance the utilisation of intermittent renewable electricity is analysed.

Energy shifting in wastewater treatment using compressed oxygen from integrated hydrogen production.

Integrating renewable hydrogen production via electrolysis with wastewater treatment is an opportunity to manage environmental resources more sustainably while providing a pathway to producing sustainable hydrogen at industrial scale. The synergies of integrating oxygen production from water electrolysis and oxygen use in wastewater treatment benefit both hydrogen production and wastewater industries. However, the understanding of the most suitable integrated process configuration and scale of renewable equipment is not known.