Solar hydrogen production by photocatalytic reforming of cellulose with concentrated sunlight
This project aims to enhance the efficiency of photocatalytic hydrogen production based on our previous development on visible-light photocatalyst, concentrated solar irradiation and thermal management.
Description
Photocatalytic reforming of biomass is a sustainable process to produce renewable hydrogen gas using solar energy. Vast amount of research has been conducted on different types of catalyst materials and sacrificial biomass. However, the solar-to-hydrogen efficiency is far from satisfactory. Concentrated solar power (CSP), with the capability to concentrated solar radiation, holds great potential to enhance light intensity and produce a larger amount of hydrogen at a lower cost. This project aims to enhance the efficiency of photocatalytic hydrogen production based on our previous development on visible-light photocatalyst, concentrated solar irradiation and thermal management. Within the research project, here we open two master thesis projects:
Project 1 includes synthesis of photocatalyst, selection of sustainable catalyst carrier, integrate reactor system, and experimental study with KTH’s new low flux solar simulator.
Project 2 includes optical and mechanical design of the reactor, including optical ray-tracing simulation and flow field analysis with CFD tool.
Contact persons
Supervisor at Department of Energy Technology KTH
Supervisor at Department of Applied Physics KTH
Name: Fei Ye
Email: feiy@kth.se
Publications:
[1] Stefano De Luca, Photocatalytic generation of hydrogen from cellulose, Master Thesis, KTH, 2022.
[2] Abdusalam Uheida, Hugo Giraldo Mejía, Mohamed Abdel-Rehim, Wael Hamd, Joydeep Dutta, Visible light photocatalytic degradation of polypropylene microplastics in a continuous water flow system, Journal of Hazardous Materials, 2021, 406, 124299.