2023-04-17 スイス連邦工科大学ローザンヌ校(EPFL)
この技術は人工光合成と呼ばれ、産業、商業、家庭用のエネルギー源として使用できる。エネルギー効率を維持しながら、1キロワット天井に挑戦し、1,000倍の太陽光を集めて水を電気分解し、水素、酸素、熱を生成する仕組みを実証した。また、この仕組みは、放出される酸素分子も回収して利用できるため、医療用途などでも使用できる。
＜関連情報＞
- https://actu.epfl.ch/news/a-solar-hydrogen-system-that-co-generates-heat-and/
- https://www.nature.com/articles/s41560-023-01247-2
集光型光電気化学デバイスを用いたキロワットスケールの太陽熱水素製造システム Kilowatt-scale solar hydrogen production system using a concentrated integrated photoelectrochemical device
Isaac Holmes-Gentle,Saurabh Tembhurne,Clemens Suter & Sophia Haussener
Nature Energy Published:10 April 2023
DOI:https://doi.org/10.1038/s41560-023-01247-2
Abstract
The production of synthetic fuels and chemicals from solar energy and abundant reagents offers a promising pathway to a sustainable fuel economy and chemical industry. For the production of hydrogen, photoelectrochemical or integrated photovoltaic and electrolysis devices have demonstrated outstanding performance at the lab scale, but there remains a lack of larger-scale on-sun demonstrations (>100 W). Here we present the successful scaling of a thermally integrated photoelectrochemical device—utilizing concentrated solar irradiation—to a kW-scale pilot plant capable of co-generation of hydrogen and heat. A solar-to-hydrogen device-level efficiency of greater than 20% at an H2 production rate of >2.0 kW (>0.8 g min−1) is achieved. A validated model-based optimization highlights the dominant energetic losses and predicts straightforward strategies to improve the system-level efficiency of >5.5% towards the device-level efficiency. We identify solutions to the key technological challenges, control and operation strategies and discuss the future outlook of this emerging technology.
