Hydrogen Generation through Cavitation-Based Water Splitting: Influence of Inlet Pressure

Currently, hydrogen is considered a green, valid alternative to fossil fuels, and many efforts are being made to find sustainable processes for hydrogen generation. Water hydrodynamic cavitation is one of them; it consists of pressure variations in a water stream flowing through a constriction, such as an orifice or venturi. This phenomenon leads to the growth and collapse of microbubbles or cavities, generating high local temperature and pressure, creating the optimal condition for hydrogen generation due to water splitting. Our research work is aimed at modelling and testing hydrodynamic cavitation-based hydrogen generation. For this purpose, cavitation simulations were carried out using Ansys Fluent 2025 to investigate a cavitation orifice reactor. The computational analysis was conducted on a pipe with a diameter of 30 mm, an orifice diameter of 2 mm, an orifice length of 2 mm and a total length of 14 mm. The effect of varying the pressure inlet was analysed, revealing that the vapour and low-pressure region expand with an increase in inlet pressure.