A TECHNO-ECONOMIC REVIEW OF ELECTROLYTIC PRODUCTION OF HYPOCHLOROUS ACID (HOCl)

In this review electrolytic hypochlorous acid generators were investigated and their advantages and disadvantages were identified. Hypochlorous acid is a highly efficient solution for sanitizing and one hundred percent safe for human use but like all disinfection solutions, it has some disadvantages, such as low shelf life in some cases, can damage skin in high chlorine concentrations and it can cause corrosion in metals, etc. In general, bacteria, pathogens and viruses surrounded us. The hypochlorous acid could be used as disinfection solution for confronting this danger. Producing hypochlorous acid is commercial issue and companies do not allow to other people for having access to their mechanism that used for producing hypochlorous acid. So, for this case of study, emails were sent to approximately 110 companies that supply hypochlorous acid generators or producers of hypochlorous acid in the world. Only a few of them responded, about 2 companies cooperated and filled the tables that I prepared and about 3 people sent me some papers. This final report has been written according to these responded and 270 papers that I read. The result is a classification of four models of devices that produce hypochlorous acid through electrolysis from the past to the present and evaluation of the advantages and disadvantages of these four main models. Also, some criteria have been written for the feed quality of these cells, quality criteria of and the maintenance of these cell parts because these devices have ideal operating conditions and these conditions should be considered to produce better hypochlorous acid with longer shelf life. In the following, an economic review has been written on these electrolytic cells for producing hypochlorous acid. For this case of study, the technical and economic information of the available devices has been collected. Also, to better communicate with companies that active in production of hypochlorous acid, their page addresses and contact emails have been written in appendices chapter. Based on technical and economic information, results have been obtained regarding the prices and efficiency of these hypochlorous acid generators. Also, in this work, the main problems of these devices were investigated and some recommendations have been written in the recommendation chapter to improve these problems. These recommendations are related to best device that could produce hypochlorous acid, corrosion on anode, fouling formation on the cathode, low shelf life of the hypochlorous acid, modeling the space between electrodes by simulation software and control system, etc. Also, some recommendations have been written about replacing power supply of the electrolytic cells devices by using renewable energy devices.