The opportunity of using hydrogen produced from electrocoagulation process of hospital liquid waste as renewable energy source

Abstract

The need for sustainable energy has made it important to study several alternative renewable energy sources. It has also been discovered that the current pandemic conditions have caused more hospital visits, thereby, leading to the production of more liquid wastes. One of the methods usually used to treat this hospital wastewater is electrocoagulation which removes dissolved pollutants and also produces hydrogen as part of its products. Therefore, this study was conducted to determine the opportunity of using the hydrogen produced from the electrocoagulation process of hospital wastewater as an alternative source of renewable energy. The observations were made on a laboratory scale using ciprofloxacin antibiotic and methylene blue solution as samples of the waste. The results showed the best product is the hydrogen gas accumulated when using aluminum electrodes in the electrocoagulation process of antibiotic and methylene blue solutions for 4 hours with a solution pH of 10. A total of 97.85.10−3 mmol hydrogen gas or 0.2% by volume of the waste solution was produced from processing 1 liter of waste solution. Further research is, however, recommended on the utilization of wastewater treatment through the electrocoagulation process as a source of hydrogen.