Effects of water quality on mineral hydration in industrial processes for greenhouse gas emission reduction

R&D Focus Areas:
Electrolysis, Techno-economic evaluation, Water use and treatment

Lead Organisation:
University of Western Australia

Funding:
Future Energy Exports CRC (PhD Project)

Status:
Active

Start date:
2022

Completion date:
2025

Project summary description:
The project will focus on the techno-economic analysis of green hydrogen production via electrolysers technology with a focus on identifying the impact of feed water quality to the operation of an electrolysers. This analysis will focus on the technical aspects of long-term operation of an electrolysers using non-pure water sources and the identification of techno-economic solutions to varying production locations across Western Australia; in particular sea water (through RO membrane separation technology), brine and diluted hypersaline water sources often found available in remote water scarce location.

In the first year of study, the research will include a literature review of currently available technologies both for production of green hydrogen via electrolysis and the purification of varying salinity water sources using membrane technologies. This analysis will include horizon technologies for direct electrolysis of poor-quality water sources and where possible, identification of fundamental technological and physical limitations of these horizon technologies.

In the second year of study, the research will include techno-economic analysis via an in-house developed spreadsheeting tool, which will be based on the state-of-the-art derived from the Year 1 literature reviews. The outcome of year 2 will be an easy-to-use techno-economic tool able to analyse basic cases (1) sea water-to-green hydrogen; (2) brine-to-green hydrogen based on desalination brine (a waste stream from traditional reverse osmosis); (3) diluted-hypersaline water derived from mine site water qualities.

In the third year of research, focus would be on case-based techno-economic analysis on different Western Australian relevant cases using the tool(s) developed and tested in the previous two years.

The outcome of this work is the publication of case-based scenarios to guide the logical selection of technology pathways for the choice of purification and electrolyser technologies in tandem. The case of focus will be water-scarce locations in Western Australia with access to sub-quality water sources. Where possible the research will perform analysis of different water sources to assess water qualities, and to identify potential electrolysers issues.

The outcome of the project will be the delivery of a techno-economic analysis report and analysis tool for water purification and electrolyser options for varying quality feed water.

Further information:
https://www.fenex.org.au/connect/

 

September 2024