journal article·2026-03-09Open access

Effect of Water Quality Produced at Each Stage of the Seawater Desalination Process on Hydrogen Production in Water Electrolysis

Pyae Pyae Shwe Sin, Tomohiro Yadai, Hiroshi Yamamura, Yoshihiro Suzuki, Yasuyuki Ota, Kensuke Nishioka

Applied Sciences· Volume 16· Issue 5

Abstract

Hydrogen production via water electrolysis using desalinated seawater offers a sustainable energy solution and has attracted considerable attention in recent years. However, its efficiency depends heavily on the quality of water. Many studies have not explored the relationship between treated water quality and hydrogen generation efficiency at each stage of the seawater desalination process. This study examines a three-step seawater desalination process comprising softening with ballasted flocculation (SBF) as a pretreatment, reverse osmosis (RO) as the main desalination step, and ion exchange as a polishing step to provide high-quality water for electrolysis. Water from each purification stage was supplied to the electrolyzer to compare the impact on water quality and hydrogen generation efficiency. The SBF process removed magnesium (Mg) and calcium (Ca) from seawater, as well as turbidity and bacteria, but hydrogen production via water electrolysis continued for no more than 10 h. However, when feeding RO water and RO water processed by ion exchange after the SBF process, hydrogen was generated stably and continuously for 70 h, achieving high efficiency comparable to that of commercial pure water. High production of green hydrogen by water electrolysis is possible through RO seawater desalination combined with SBF pretreatment.
Source: crossref · Quality: baseline

Research context

OpenAlex topics: Anaerobic Digestion and Biogas Production · Hybrid Renewable Energy Systems · Membrane Separation Technologies

SciVX discovery tags are terminology-based. OpenAlex topics are source-provided classifications.

Affiliations

Interdisciplinary Graduate School of Agriculture and Engineering, University of Miyazaki, 1-1 Gakuen Kibanadai-nishi, Miyazaki 889-2192, Japan

Graduate School of Engineering, University of Miyazaki, 1-1 Gakuen Kibanadai-nishi, Miyazaki 889-2192, Japan

Faculty of Science and Engineering, Chuo University, 1-13-27 Kasuga, Bunkyo-ku, Tokyo 112-8551, Japan

Faculty of Engineering, University of Miyazaki, 1-1 Gakuen Kibanadai-nishi, Miyazaki 889-2192, Japan

GX Research Center, University of Miyazaki, 1-1 Gakuen Kibanadai-nishi, Miyazaki 889-2192, Japan

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