Technology to produce electricity using wastewater

Projecte PENSAR del Grup GENOCOV. Planta de residus

The technology allows for a sustainable production of hydrogen as a source of energy and was developed by GENOCOV, research group belonging to the Department of Engineering and member of the TECNIO BIOGLS centre.

26/06/2014

The project, called Producció d'Energia Sostenible a partir d'Aigües Residuals (PENSAR), generates hydrogen to produce electricity by using the treatment of wastewater. This hydrogen, considered to be one of the most promising green fuels of the future, allows firms to change the concept of water treatment from a process of energy consumption to one of clean production.

The new technology makes use of the chemical energy contained in wastewater for a bioelectrochemical production of hydrogen. By using this process, the costs of wastewater treatments are minimised and at the same time part of the energy invested is recovered. The energetic cost of wastewater treatment systems is estimated to be around 2% of the total production of electricity in Spain.

The PENSAR project receives support from the Valtec technology assessment line of ACCIÓ, the Agency for Business Competitiveness of the Government of Catalonia. “With the support of the Valtec programme we will be able to apply all the knowledge acquired in the lab in recent years to construct a pilot plant, which will be up and running next year”, states Albert Guisasola, lecturer at the UAB.

Preliminary experiments demonstrate that more than four times the energy needed to treat wastewater can be obtained in hydrogen form. Once the viability of the technology is demonstrated at large scale, it will be ready to be used in other types of companies, such as those from the food sector.