THIRUVANANTHAPURAM: While the virulent second wave of Covid has shot up demand for oxygen in the country, little is being done to harness oxygen from water resources for medical purposes. Sileesh Mullasseri, a young research scholar with the School of Fisheries and Ocean Studies under the Kerala University of Fisheries and Ocean studies, has suggested that medical oxygen in its purest form can be separated from seawater using electrolysis aided by solar power.
The 36-year-old says it is the most sustainable method to tap oxygen from water by differentiating it from hydrogen. At present, medical use oxygen is harnessed from air through a tedious process which requires filtering from pollutants.“Electrolysis with seawater is a good method to tap oxygen and hydrogen. This is simple and conventional, with two power-connected electrodes placed in water. Oxygen and hydrogen gas bubbles would come out of the negative and positive ends respectively.
The process can be performed with the support of solar energy. As the country has a long coastline, there is huge scope for the method. Oxygen can be harnessed everywhere if the experiment is done in a proper way,” Sileesh says.Last year, a few scientists from the Stanford University in the United States had successfully attempted it.
In a simple design, they coated the anode electrode with a layer of rich negative charges that repelled chlorides and prevented the decay of anode. However, Sileesh says the experimentation is still in progress while the Indian universities are yet to do it.“Given the oxygen crisis, this experiment should be conducted on a war-footing. Scientists working in that particular field can attempt it, and if successful, large quantities of oxygen can be stored for future need,” he says.
Sileesh is researching the biological aspect of the ocean, and conducting electrolysis of seawater on such a scale is not his area of expertise, he points out that using solar power is a sustainable method for the production of medical oxygen and hydrogen. “Hydrogen is a future fuel. We have the coastline to make the project successful. But technological support is imperative, like in the case of the Covid vaccine,” he says. The abundance of tiny plants called phytoplankton act as the key catalyst and the ocean contributes 50 to 85% of the oxygen in our atmosphere.