New system to harness 40% of the sun's heat
to produce clean hydrogen fuel
October 16 2023, by Jennifer Chu
MIT engineers have developed a design for a system that efficiently harnesses
the sun’s heat to split water and generate hydrogen. Credit: Massachusetts
Institute of Technology
MIT engineers aim to produce totally green, carbon-free hydrogen fuel
with a new, train-like system of reactors that is driven solely by the sun.
In a study published today in Solar Energy, the engineers lay out the
1/6
conceptual design for a system that can efficiently produce "solar
thermochemical hydrogen." The system harnesses the sun's heat to
directly split water and generate hydrogen—a clean fuel that can power
long-distance trucks, ships, and planes, while in the process emitting no
greenhouse gas emissions.
Today, hydrogen is largely produced through processes that involve
natural gas and other fossil fuels, making the otherwise green fuel more
of a "gray" energy source when considered from the start of its
production to its end use. In contrast, solar thermochemical hydrogen, or
STCH, offers a totally emissions-free alternative, as it relies entirely on
renewable solar energy to drive hydrogen production. But so far, existing
STCH designs have limited efficiency: Only about 7% of incoming
sunlight is used to make hydrogen. The results so far have been low-yield
and high-cost.
In a big step toward realizing solar-made fuels, the MIT team estimates
its new design could harness up to 40% of the sun's heat to generate that
much more hydrogen. The increase in efficiency could drive down the
system's overall cost, making STCH a potentially scalable, affordable
option to help decarbonize the transportation industry.
"We're thinking of hydrogen as the fuel of the future, and there's a need
to generate it cheaply and at scale," says the study's lead author, Ahmed
Ghoniem, the Ronald C. Crane Professor of Mechanical Engineering at
MIT. "We're trying to achieve the Department of Energy's goal, which is
to make green hydrogen by 2030, at $1 per kilogram. To improve the
economics, we have to improve the efficiency and make sure most of
the solar energy we collect is used in the production of hydrogen."
Solar stations
Similar to other proposed designs, the MIT system would be paired with
2/6
an existing source of solar heat, such as a concentrated solar plant
(CSP)—a circular array of hundreds of mirrors that collect and reflect
sunlight to a central receiving tower. An STCH system then absorbs the
receiver's heat and directs it to split water and produce hydrogen. This
process is very different from electrolysis, which uses electricity instead
of heat to split water.
At the heart of a conceptual STCH system is a two-step thermochemical
reaction. In the first step, water in the form of steam is exposed to a
metal. This causes the metal to grab oxygen from steam, leaving
hydrogen behind. This metal "oxidation" is similar to the rusting of iron
in the presence of water, but it occurs much faster. Once hydrogen is
separated, the oxidized (or rusted) metal is reheated in a vacuum, which
acts to reverse the rusting process and regenerate the metal. With the
oxygen removed, the metal can be cooled and exposed to steam again to
produce more hydrogen. This process can be repeated hundreds of times.
The MIT system is designed to optimize this process. The system as a
whole resembles a train of box-shaped reactors running on a circular
track. In practice, this track would be set around a solar thermal source,
such as a CSP tower. Each reactor in the train would house the metal that
undergoes the redox, or reversible rusting, process.
Each reactor would first pass through a hot station, where it would be
exposed to the sun's heat at temperatures of up to 1,500°C. This extreme
heat would effectively pull oxygen out of a reactor's metal. That metal
would then be in a "reduced" state—ready to grab oxygen from steam.
For this to happen, the reactor would move to a cooler station at
temperatures around 1,000°C, where it would be exposed to steam to
produce hydrogen.
Rust and rails
3/6
Other similar STCH concepts have run up against a common obstacle:
what to do with the heat released by the reduced reactor as it is cooled.
Without recovering and reusing this heat, the system's efficiency is too
low to be practical.
A second challenge has to do with creating an energy-efficient vacuum
where metal can de-rust. Some prototypes generate a vacuum using
mechanical pumps, though the pumps are too energy-intensive and costly
for large-scale hydrogen production.
To address these challenges, the MIT design incorporates several energy-
saving workarounds. To recover most of the heat that would otherwise
escape from the system, reactors on opposite sides of the circular track
are allowed to exchange heat through thermal radiation; hot reactors get
cooled while cool reactors get heated. This keeps the heat within the
system.
The researchers also added a second set of reactors that would circle
around the first train, moving in the opposite direction. This outer train
of reactors would operate at generally cooler temperatures and would be
used to evacuate oxygen from the hotter inner train, without the need for
energy-consuming mechanical pumps.
These outer reactors would carry a second type of metal that can also
easily oxidize. As they circle around, the outer reactors would absorb
oxygen from the inner reactors, effectively de-rusting the original metal,
without having to use energy-intensive vacuum pumps. Both reactor
trains would run continuously and would generate separate streams of
pure hydrogen and oxygen.
The researchers carried out detailed simulations of the conceptual
design, and found that it would significantly boost the efficiency of solar
thermochemical hydrogen production, from 7%, as previous designs
4/6
have demonstrated, to 40%.
"We have to think of every bit of energy in the system, and how to use it,
to minimize the cost," Ghoniem says. "And with this design, we found
that everything can be powered by heat coming from the sun. It is able to
use 40% of the sun's heat to produce hydrogen."
"If this can be realized, it could drastically change our energy
future—namely, enabling hydrogen production, 24/7," says Christopher
Muhich, an assistant professor of chemical engineering at Arizona State
University, who was not involved in the research. "The ability to make
hydrogen is the linchpin to producing liquid fuels from sunlight."
In the next year, the team will be building a prototype of the system that
they plan to test in concentrated solar power facilities at laboratories of
the Department of Energy.
"When fully implemented, this system would be housed in a little
building in the middle of a solar field," Patankar explains. "Inside the
building, there could be one or more trains each having about 50
reactors. And we think this could be a modular system, where you can
add reactors to a conveyor belt, to scale up hydrogen production."
More information: Aniket S. Patankar et al, A comparative analysis
of integrating thermochemical oxygen pumping in water-splitting redox
cycles for hydrogen production, Solar Energy (2023). DOI:
10.1016/j.solener.2023.111960 dspace.mit.edu/handle/1721.1/152412
This story is republished courtesy of MIT News
(web.mit.edu/newsoffice/), a popular site that covers news about MIT
research, innovation and teaching.
5/6
Provided by Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Citation: New system to harness 40% of the sun's heat to produce clean hydrogen fuel (2023,
October 16) retrieved 29 October 2023 from https://techxplore.com/news/2023-10-harness-sun-
hydrogen-fuel.html
This document is subject to copyright. Apart from any fair dealing for the purpose of private
study or research, no part may be reproduced without the written permission. The content is
provided for information purposes only.
6/6
Powered by TCPDF (www.tcpdf.org)
