Jack Loughran Tue 13 May 2025
Collected at: https://eandt.theiet.org/2025/05/13/electrolysis-technique-converts-seawater-hydrogen-without-desalination
A new technique can produce clean hydrogen directly from seawater without the need for desalination or added chemicals.
Researchers at the University of Sharjah in the UAE have designed a multi-layered electrode that resists the corrosion and performance degradation typically caused by chloride ions in traditional seawater electrolysis.
Their prototype system was able to sustain industrial-scale hydrogen production for more than 300 hours without any loss in performance. It also achieved a ‘Faradaic efficiency’ of 98%, which means that nearly all the electrical input was converted to hydrogen gas.
By eliminating the need for freshwater and energy-intensive desalination, the technology could enable solar-powered hydrogen farms in arid coastal areas such as those in the UAE, where seawater and sunlight are plentiful but freshwater is scarce.
If scaled up properly, the system could make it easier to produce large quantities of ‘green hydrogen’, produced through electrolysis with using renewable energy.
In contrast, ‘blue hydrogen’ is produced from natural gas via steam methane reforming or autothermal reforming and does not offer as many potential carbon-reduction benefits.
The researchers are currently preparing for pilot-scale testing and are ultimately planning to build a modular, solar-powered hydrogen generator designed for real-world use in harsh environments.
“Traditional methods face a host of problems, mainly corrosion and performance degradation caused by chloride ions in seawater,” said Tanveer Ul Haq, the study’s lead author.
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