Are there self sufficient water treatment plants thru hydrogen production.?
Reclaiming treated waste water, are there any plants in the USA that produces hydrogen from this wastewater, using the hydrogen to power the plant to make potable water. Essentially making water for free, the byproduct being heat and pure water.
3 Responses
DrHenry
10 Mar 2010
bzbzbe
10 Mar 2010
Making hydrogen from water is not currently very efficient. It takes much more energy from electricity then it returns. That is why it wouldn’t work, at least not with current technology. Maybe someday they will be able to use enzymes, like those that plants use to make sugar, to make hydrogen or make it by some other method.
Rich Z
10 Mar 2010
That would be like a perpetual motion machine, impossible to really achieve. No one does it because it take more electrical eenrgy to make the hydrogen thatn you can get back by burning it for electricity.
One technique that is useful is to use the methane given off by decomposing sewage as the fuel. Boston’s Deer Island Treatment plant does that with significant energy savings.
Making hydrogen for reuse as energy will never be 100% efficient and today it is highly highly highly (get the point) uneconomical. Until the science improves, no water treatment plant would ever consider this method.