The PHOTOSINT project presents solutions to the chemical industries' challenges in integrating renewable energy sources into their processes. The project will deliver sustainable processes to produce hydrogen and methanol as energy vectors using only sunlight as an energy source and wastewater and CO2 as feedstocks, making the industries more self-sufficient. The production pathway is based on solar-driven artificial photosynthesis and aims to develop new catalytic earth-abundant materials and modifications of existing ones to improve catalytic processes. The PEC cell design parameters will be fine-tuned to maximise efficiency in solar to fuel (STF). Moreover, to improve the conversion for industrial implementation, PHOTOSINT will develop a novel way to concentrate and illuminate the semiconductor surface, increasing the light collection surface at about the same CAPEX, while the innovative incorporation of a heat exchange system between the semiconductor and the electrochemical cell will maximize overall energy efficiency and improve the OPEX. Moreover, low-cost state-of-the-art perovskite solar PV cells will be integrated to harvest the light to supply the external electrical voltage.
PHOTOSINT is an ambitious project due to the limited research conducted to date and the low production rate for the desired products. To integrate sunlight energy into the industry, the catalysts will be studied, and then the best one/s will be implemented in prototypes. The obtained results will be used for making scale-up in pilots with tandem PEC cells. These steps are necessary to assess the industrial scale-up feasibility, promoting the increased competitiveness of renewable process energy technologies and energy independence. Furthermore, MeOH and H2 will be tested in engines. Also, an HTPEM fuel cell will be used for electricity generation, and hydrogen will be tested in melting furnaces as an alternative fuel source instead of natural gas, thereby eliminating CO2 emissions.
The main PHOTOSINT objective is to actively support the integration of renewable energy sources into the energy demand of the chemical industry by proposing innovative, feasible and secure solutions. To this end, the project will develop novel photoelectrochemical production methods for liquid/gas energy carriers, which can be implemented in industrial contexts for renewable energy to meet the energy demands of chemical processes. For this purpose, local resources streams such as CO2 emissions or secondary wastewater from industry will be converted into valuable liquid and gaseous fuels, specifically methanol and hydrogen, by electrocatalysis, using sunlight exclusively as an energy source. Pathways will be developed, and different catalyst materials will be tested to maximise the conversion. First, a single cell will be used for testing and optimising the catalytic electrodes, and then the scale-up phase will be carried out to shed light on the feasibility of achieving higher productivity toward industrial implementation.
