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Photoelectrochemical production of disinfectants from seawater

Nature Sustainability volume 8, pages 672–681 (2025)Cite this article

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Abstract

Active chlorine, including HClO and ClO−, is one of the most extensively used disinfectants. However, it is mainly produced through energy-consuming three-step chlor-alkali electrolysis of saturated brine using Cl2 gases as intermediates. Here we report a photoelectrochemical synthetic pathway from natural seawater using a chloride-mediated NbClOx/BiVO4 photoanode. The photoanode presents an onset potential of 0.6 V versus a reversible hydrogen electrode (VRHE) and over 500 h of stability in seawater under one sun illumination. The faradaic efficiency and selectivity of hypochlorite are close to 100% at 1.2–1.8 VRHE with a yield of 119.9 ± 9 μmol cm−2 h−1 at 1.72 VRHE. Meanwhile, value-added products of Mg(OH)2 and CaCO3 are obtained on the cathode, accompanied by hydrogen production. Further analyses show that the present process reduces electricity consumption by 77.16% and CO2 emissions by 75.31%. Our findings suggest a strategy with combined safety, efficiency and economic feasibility for direct synthesis of active chlorine from seawater.

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Fig. 1: PEC disinfectant synthesis in natural seawater.
Fig. 2: Long-term PEC stability of NbClOx/BiVO4 in natural seawater with regulated pH.
Fig. 3: Synthesis of value-added products from natural seawater cathodes.
Fig. 4: Theoretical calculations of ClOR for NbClOx/BiVO4 and BiVO4.
Fig. 5: Mechanistic study of disinfectant synthesis on NbClOx/BiVO4.

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Data availability

The data that support the findings of this study are available from the corresponding authors upon reasonable request. Source data are provided with this paper.

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Acknowledgements

The work was supported by the National Science and Technology Major Project (grant no. 2022YFA1205200), the National Natural Science Foundation of China (grant nos 22269016, 22479083 and 22405138) and the Group Project of Developing Inner Mongolia through Talents from the Talents Work Leading Group under the CPC Inner Mongolia Autonomous Regional Committee (grant no. 2025TYL03). N.T.N. acknowledges NSERC, FRQNT and QCAM for financial support. We thank Y. Li at the University of Electronic Science and Technology of China for the discussion of this work.

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Author notes

  1. These authors contributed equally: Rui-Ting Gao, Zehua Gao.

Authors and Affiliations

  1. College of Chemistry and Chemical Engineering, College of Energy Material and Chemistry, Inner Mongolia Key Laboratory of Low Carbon Catalysis, Inner Mongolia University, Hohhot, China

    Rui-Ting Gao, Zehua Gao, Lei Wang & Limin Wu

  2. Department of Chemical and Materials Engineering, Gina Cody School of Engineering and Computer Science, Concordia University, Montreal, Quebec, Canada

    Nhat Truong Nguyen

  3. State Key Laboratory of Structural Chemistry, and Fujian Provincial Key Laboratory of Materials and Techniques toward Hydrogen Energy, Fujian Institute of Research on the Structure of Matter, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Fuzhou, China

    Junxiang Chen

  4. National Engineering Research Center for Advanced Polymer Processing Technology, Zhengzhou University, Zhengzhou, China

    Xianhu Liu

  5. Department of Materials Science and State Key Laboratory of Molecular Engineering of Polymers, Fudan University, Shanghai, China

    Limin Wu

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  1. Rui-Ting Gao
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Contributions

L. Wu, R.-T.G. and L. Wang conceived the idea, designed the experiments and supervised the research project. R.-T.G. and Z.G. conducted the experiments and characterizations under discussion with N.T.N., X.L. and L. Wang. R.-T.G. analysed the data and wrote the paper. J.C. performed the modelling and simulation. L. Wu and L. Wang revised the paper. All the authors contributed to the experiments and discussion of the paper.

Corresponding authors

Correspondence to Lei Wang or Limin Wu.

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Nature Sustainability thanks Hao Li and the other, anonymous, reviewer(s) for their contribution to the peer review of this work.

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Supplementary Figs. 1–67, Notes 1–13, Tables 1–21 and Methods.

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Gao, RT., Gao, Z., Nguyen, N.T. et al. Photoelectrochemical production of disinfectants from seawater. Nat Sustain 8, 672–681 (2025). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41893-025-01530-y

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