The reactive material (or redox material) used is ceria, an abundant ceramic with proven stability. In the first step, a thermal reduction occurs using the energy from the highly concentrated sunlight, heating the reactor to temperatures of 1500☌ and above.Īt the same time, a vacuum pump reduces the pressure in the reactors to about ten millibars. The ETH team build on a successful thermochemical process using ceria in a solar reactor’s two-step reduction-oxidation (redox) cycle. Today, these sectors use fossil-based fuels such as jet fuel and diesel. As such, these sectors are difficult to decarbonize. Solar thermochemical research is crucial for climate change mitigation goals because long-haul aviation and shipping require liquid fuels with high specific energy. Solar thermochemistry-driven processes to make syngas for drop-in solar aviation fuel have taken off in the last five years, with successful demonstrations and lab research spin-offs like Synhelion starting to go commercial. Solar fuels made this way are a clean alternative to fossil fuels Their results were published at Applied Energy in High-temperature heat recovery from a solar reactor for the thermochemical redox splitting of H2O and CO2. The team demonstrated heat recovery at the 4 kW lab scale under concentrated thermal radiation conditions. Now Lidor’s ETH team has engineered a way to recover this lost heat. “And there have been a lot of theoretical ideas over the years, all kinds of heat recovery methods – but not to actually go to the lab, build a device, and try to make it work.” Alon Lidor, a Senior Research Associate at ETH Zürich, working under Prof. “So this remained one of the open questions,” said Dr. But so far, no research has successfully incorporated heat recovery to recoup the heat lost during solar thermochemistry. The largest energy loss in the process is the sensible heat required to heat up the reactive materials to temperatures over 1500 ☌ at each cycle. The syngas can be converted to liquid transportation fuels using established technologies such as Fischer-Tropsch. In this solar technology, highly concentrated solar energy directly heats a solar reactor and drives a thermochemical process, using carbon dioxide and water as the raw materials to produce syngas, a mixture of hydrogen and carbon monoxide. Why heat-recovery for solar reactors matters Solar reactor used for the heat recovery test at ETH Zürich. All Research Papers – SolarPACES Conference 2014.All Research Papers – SolarPACES Conference 2015.
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