Solar demonstration of thermochemical two-step water splitting cycle using CeO2/MPSZ ceramic foam device by 45kWth KIER solar furnace

The joint international project of Niigata University (Japan) - Korea Institute of Energy Research, KIER (Korea) on the Solar demonstration of Water-Splitting Reactor using Ceramic Foam Device aims to develop a novel-type of solar reactor with reactive cerium oxide foam devices for high-temperature two-step thermochemical water splitting cycle, and to demonstrate its performances on sun with a 45-kW(th) solar furnace. The reactive CeO2 foam device for the two-step water splitting is proposed and prepared by Niigata University, Japan, and involves coating inert zirconia foam with reactive CeO2. The project includes the development of reactive foam devices, the new design and the fabrication of solar reactor with the reactive foam devices, and finally the solar demonstration on the KIER's 45-kW(th) solar furnace in Korea. In this paper, highly-active CeO2 particles were used as a redox material for preparing CeO2 foam devices. A ceramic foam disk made of MgO partially-stabilized Zirconia (MPSZ) was used as a ceramic matrix that was coated with the CeO2 particles. Solar thermochemical two-step water splitting was demonstrated with solar furnace in Korea system using the prepared CeO2-coated MPSZ (CeO2/MPSZ) foam devices. The prepared CeO2/MPSZ foam device has a diameter of 15 and 20cm and thickness of 2.5 cm, the loading of CeO2 was set to approximately 20 wt%. Then, the temperatures of the foam device at a center position were 1400-1600 degrees C for the T-R step, and 900-1100 degrees C for the subsequent W-D step. Hydrogen was successfully produced from the CeO2-MPSZ foam by a solar thermochemical two-step water-splitting, and the rate of hydrogen production and CeO2 conversion using 15 cm CeO2/MPSZ foam device were 215.6 mL/min and 3.67%, at 1st cycle. We also performed continuous testing for 20 cm diameter of the CeO2-MPSZ device, the rate of hydrogen production and CeO2 conversion were 443 ml/min and 3.27%, 1st cycle. (C) 2013 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd. This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/).