Clemens Gregor Suter

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Kilowatt-scale solar hydrogen production system using a concentrated integrated photoelectrochemical device

Sophia Haussener, Isaac Thomas Holmes-Gentle, Clemens Gregor Suter, Saurabh Yuvraj Tembhurne

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.

2023

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The solar thermochemical cycle based on ceria is a promising route for renewable fuel production. The solar-to-fuel efficiency of a thermochemical reactor is highly dependent on the oxygen removal during the reduction step. Conventional nitrogen sweeping (NS) requires high heating load and additional gas separation work, which limit the reactor efficiency. We propose the integration of a high-temperature electrochemical oxygen pump (EOP) for in situ oxygen removal to minimize the heating load and to allow for effective oxygen pumping. A transient model was developed to quantify the reactor performance using EOP or NS schemes. The model predicted that the ceria nonstoichiometric coefficient at the end of the reduction was enhanced by 56.8% when using the EOP scheme compared to the NS scheme. Correspondingly, the solar-to-fuel efficiency enhancement factor was 1.64 at reference conditions. In addition, the EOP scheme showed more uniform temperature and species concentration distributions, leading to a more favorable thermo-mechanical stability.

AMER CHEMICAL SOC2022

Integrated solar-driven high-temperature electrolysis operating with concentrated irradiation

Stefan Diethelm, Sophia Haussener, Meng Lin, Clemens Gregor Suter, Jan Van Herle

High-temperature electrolysis for reducing H2O (and CO2) to H2 (and CO) converts concentrated solar energy into fuels and chemical feedstock. We invented an integrated reactor concept comprising a solar cavity receiver for reactant heating, a solid oxide electrolyzer (SOE) stack for water electrolysis, and concentrated photovoltaic (PV) cells for the SOE stack’s electricity demand. A numerical model compared thermoneutral and endo/exothermal operation of the SOE stack. Without heat recovery, we predicted a maximum solar-to-hydrogen (STH) efficiency of 19.85% (assuming 20% PV efficiency and 20% heat losses in the solar cavity receiver) and preferentially endothermal operation. Heat recovery further improved the performance. We demonstrated a 2.5 kW (17% electrical and 83% thermal input) reactor, incorporating a commercial 16-cell Ni/YSZ/LSM SOE stack into a double-helical solar cavity receiver, with 3.33% STH efficiency (assuming 20% PV efficiency). The experimentally supported analysis indicates that endothermal operation increases the performance and predicts STH efficiencies encouraging intensified research and technology development.

2022