EES: A ternary system for generating renewable hydrogen from waste biomass feedstock using the full solar spectrum

• Solar hydrogen production is a viable strategy for decarbonizing the global energy economy, as it directly addresses the intermittency issues associated with solar resources and serves as an alternative energy carrier. Jason Scott and Robert A. Taylor at the University of New South Wales have proposed a solar-powered system capable of producing hydrogen from low-carbon and low-water waste biomass.

• The three component system consists of a membrane based waste biomass concentrator (WBC), a biomass pretreatment reactor (BPR) integrated with a series of hybrid photovoltaic thermal (PVT) collectors, and a flow Electrolytic cell (FEC) equipped with high-performance electrodes. The author has constructed a new type of all solar spectrum hybrid PVT reflector concentrator, which achieves a thermal efficiency of up to 50% when operating at 120-150 ° C, while also converting 8% of solar energy into FEC electricity. Solar thermal BPR can convert recycled waste biomass (i.e., sugary liquid raw materials) into biools (5-hydroxymethylfurfural) in a yield of 25 mol%, and then use the converted biomass as feed for the FEC anode chamber.

  
  

  In FEC, the biomass electrolysis using NiMo catalyst promotes the production of hydrogen, and has a low energy consumption of 40-53 kWh/kg, which is 16-28% higher than the alkaline Water splitting efficiency using foam nickel electrode. The three Meta-system has achieved 7.5% solar hydrogen conversion efficiency, additional clean water production (recycled water>80%) and value-added chemical by-product synthesis (the yield of 2,5-furandicarboxylic acid in the waste sugar stream is 3-10%). This work provides a new way to achieve efficient and economically feasible renewable hydrogen production.
  

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• Qiyuan Li et.al A ternary system exploiting the full solar spectrum to generate renewable hydrogen from a waste biomass feedstock EES 2023

  
  

  DOI: 10.1039/D3EE00603D

  
  

  https://doi.org/10.1039/D3EE00603D