Journal
ENERGY & ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCE
Volume 10, Issue 5, Pages 1142-1149Publisher
ROYAL SOC CHEMISTRY
DOI: 10.1039/c6ee03776c
Keywords
-
Funding
- Swiss National Science Foundation [200021-162435]
- Swiss Federal Office of Energy [SI/501213-01]
- European Commission (SOLAR-JET) [285098]
- European Research Council under the European Union's ERC Advanced Grant (SUNFUELS) [320541]
- Swiss National Science Foundation (SNF) [200021_162435] Funding Source: Swiss National Science Foundation (SNF)
Ask authors/readers for more resources
Developing solar technologies for converting CO2 into fuels has become a great energy challenge, as it closes the anthropogenic carbon cycle and leads to the production of sustainable transportation fuels on a global scale. However, the low mass conversion, poor selectivity, and/or low energy efficiency of current approaches have hindered their industrial implementation. Here, we experimentally demonstrate the solar-driven thermochemical splitting of CO2 into separate streams of CO and O-2 with 100% selectivity, 83% molar conversion, and 5.25% solar-to-fuel energy efficiency. This benchmark performance was accomplished using a 4 kW solar reactor featuring a reticulated porous structure, made of ceria, directly exposed to 3000x flux irradiation and undergoing redox cycling via temperature/pressure-swing operation. The dual-scale interconnected porosity (mm and mm-sized pores) of the ceria structure provided volumetric radiative absorption and enhanced heat/mass transport for rapid redox kinetics, while 500 consecutive redox cycles further validated material stability and structure robustness. A detailed energy balance elucidates viable paths for achieving higher efficiencies and for large-scale industrial implementation using an array of modular solar reactors integrated into the established solar concentrating infrastructure.
Authors
I am an author on this paper
Click your name to claim this paper and add it to your profile.
Reviews
Recommended
No Data Available