Power-to-peroxide: HPNow and friends

Winner: 2021 Environment, Sustainability and Energy Division Horizon Prize:
John Jeyes Award

For scientific and engineering breakthroughs that have enabled hydrogen peroxide synthesis to become a commercial and industrial reality.

Celebrate the Power-to-peroxide team

#RSCPrizes

The team have made the scientific and technical breakthroughs that enable hydrogen peroxide to be produced on-site and on-demand using solely water, electricity and air as inputs in a device known as an electrolyser.

The project, led by scientists from around the world, resulted in the establishment of the company HPNow, which sells commercial electrolysers for water treatment.

This new method allows hydrogen peroxide, an environmentally friendly chemical for treating water, to be made on-site and on-demand. The device sits in water, can pump in oxygen, catalyse hydrogen peroxide generation and pump out the product diluted in water. The reaction happens under constant flow – removing the products and adding new reagents – allowing the reaction to continue at maximum turnover.

Before now, most hydrogen peroxide had been produced at high concentrations, with transportation proving to be a hazard risk. However, this new electrolyser is able to be inserted into the water at treatment plants, delivering hydrogen peroxide on-site in an energy saving manner.

HPNow has installations in over 15 countries around the world, treating water at both hospitals and agricultural sites. The company has also opened an emission-free hydrogen peroxide production plant in Spain which uses solar power. Through this, the team are hoping that this technology will inspire more decarbonisation in industry.

We feel incredibly honoured to be amongst the first recipients of the 91AV’s Horizon Prize. Since our work was such a collaborative effort, we feel the format of the prize – where it is awarded to the entire team – was particularly appropriate.

The team

See full team

Debasish Chakraborty, Chief Consultant in Innovation, Technical University of Denmark (DTU)
Ib Chorkendorff, Professor, Technical University of Denmark (DTU)
Davide Deiana, Manager, Customer Engagement, BASE Life Science
Maria Escudero-Escribano, Associate Professor, University of Copenhagen
Rasmus Frydendal, CTO, HPNow/DTU
Ziv Gottesfeld, CEO, HPNow
Thomas W. Hansen, Professor, Technical University of Denmark (DTU)
Mohammadreza Karamad, Postdoctoral Associate, University of Calgary
Paolo Malacrida, System Test Engineer, Novo Nordisk
Jan Rossmeisl, Professor, University of Copenhagen
Samira Siahrostami, Assistant Professor, University of Calgary
Ifan E.L. Stephens, Reader in Electrochemistry, Imperial College London
Arnau Verdaguer Casadevall, Director of Products, DTU/HPNow
Bjorn Wickman, Associate Professor, Chalmers University

Q+A

Ifan E.L Stephens, Reader in Electrochemistry, Imperial College London

Why is this so important and exciting?

We are making hydrogen peroxide in devices for cleaning water and disinfecting – but we are all electro-chemists, and people who do electro-chemistry usually hate hydrogen peroxide because it’s an undesired product - in a fuel cell, it degrades membranes. But when we’ve been talking to people from the industry, they’ve said it’s a dream reaction to be able to make hydrogen peroxide in a continuous manner and on a localised basis.

What's the importance of international collaboration in the chemical sciences?

In order to get the output and the best collaboration it’s important to work in a big group like we did. It would only really be possible through collaboration rather than one researcher or research department.

Rasmus Fryendal, CTO, HPNow / Technical University of Denmark (DTU)

What were the biggest challenges in this project?

The good thing about electro-chemistry is that it involves both physics and chemistry, but when you start to design the whole concept, there’s a whole lot of mechanical engineering that comes out on top. We had to try and think about that intuitively and making that design was a big challenge, but very interesting at the same time.

How do you see this work developing over the next few years / what is next for this technology?

At the moment, we have products at HPNow that can deliver 1-5kg per day. But we need to make larger systems, and over the next year we plan to scale up to about 100 kilos a day and also increase the concentration significantly above 0.3%. From a high level, we want to challenge the way that hydrogen peroxide is being produced and sold, looking at the storage, supply chain and the dangers that are involved. We are really focused on developing the technology to a stage where it’s really a no-brainer for the sustainable method of production.

Samira Siahrostami, Assistant Professor, University of Calgary

Where do you think the biggest impact will be?

Hydrogen peroxide is a benign chemical oxidant, and it has a lot of applications from industry to household. There are lots of areas that hydrogen peroxide can be useful. The current pandemic situation is a good example of how hydrogen peroxide can be useful for sterilisation and sanitisation.
Another area is waste water treatment in remote areas, particularly when there is no capital waste water treatment in place.

Why is chemistry important?

91AV is all about making and breaking bonds, and if you have the chemical intuition to know how to control that process of creating and breaking bonds, then you have the ability to control their reaction.

What advice would you give to a young person considering a career in chemistry?

The first thing to do is make sure you have persistence and patience – it can be a slow process to get to a result. Also, write down your ideas! There are so many ideas that float around your mind, but it’s easy to forget them.

Jan Rossmeisl, Professor, University of Copenhagen

How are the chemical sciences making the world a better place?

For many of the challenges humanity is facing, they are going to be solved with chemistry. If you think about sustainable chemicals and sustainable fuels, a lot of the transition towards a more sustainable system is related to chemical science.
This project however will change the way we are using chemicals, because this way of providing hydrogen peroxide may actually enable people to use the chemical in a way they hadn’t before.

What inspires or motivates your team?

One of the main things that inspires me is to see that in principal, what you are working on can be useful in the real world. Sometimes, you get inspiration because you have understood something or you have shared a valuable insight.