Scientists in Japan have demonstrated a new proof-of-concept reactor that can harvest renewable hydrogen fuel from sunlight and water.
The new 1,076-square-foot (100 square meters) reactor uses photocatalytic sheets to split apart the oxygen and hydrogen atoms found in water molecules, thus siphoning the hydrogen away to be used as fuel.
While the technology remains in its infancy, the scientists behind the research say that, if more efficient photocatalysts can be developed, their breakthrough could enable the production of cheap, sustainable hydrogen fuel to meet various energy needs. They published their findings Dec. 2 in the journal Frontiers in Science.
“Sunlight-driven water splitting using photocatalysts is an ideal technology for solar-to-chemical energy conversion and storage, and recent developments in photocatalytic materials and systems raise hopes for its realization,” senior author Kazunari Domen, a chemistry professor at Shinshu University in Japan, said in a statement. “However, many challenges remain.”
Upon being exposed to light, photocatalysts boost chemical reactions that break water molecules down into their constituent parts. However, most existing “one-step” catalysts — which decompose water into hydrogen and oxygen in one go — are extremely inefficient, leaving most of the hydrogen fuel to be refined using natural gas, a fossil fuel.
Related: ‘Holy grail’ of solar technology set to consign ‘unsustainable silicon’ to history
To look for a way past this deadlock, the researchers behind the new study investigated a photocatalyst that uses a more sophisticated two-step process, with one step separating out the oxygen and the next step removing the hydrogen.
Creating a photocatalyst for this process enabled the scientists to build their prototype reactor, which ran for three years and worked even better using real sunlight than the ultraviolet light used in the lab.
“In our system, using an ultraviolet-responsive photocatalyst, the solar energy conversion efficiency was about one and a half times higher under natural sunlight,” first author Takashi Hisatomi, a researcher at Shinshu University, said in the statement. “Simulated standard sunlight uses a spectrum from a slightly high latitude region. In an area where natural sunlight has more short-wavelength components than simulated reference sunlight, the solar energy conversion efficiency could be…
Click Here to Read the Full Original Article at Livescience…