Through the HYDROSOL Project, the Consortium team has proposed and developed for the first time an innovative structured solar reactor for the production of hydrogen from the splitting of steam using solar energy.

 

The solar reactor contained no moving parts and was constructed from special refractory ceramic thin-wall, multi-channeled (honeycomb) monoliths optimized to absorb solar radiation and develop sufficiently high temperatures. The monolith channels were coated with an active water-splitting material, and the overall reactor was very similar to the familiar catalytic converter of modern automobiles. When steam passed through the solar reactor, the active coating material split water vapor by “trapping” its oxygen and leaving in the effluent gas stream as product hydrogen. In a subsequent step, the oxygen “trapping” material was regenerated (i.e. released the oxygen absorbed), by increasing the amount of solar heat absorbed by the reactor and hence a cyclic operation was established. Active oxygen “trapping”/water-splitting materials (based on doped oxides exhibiting redox behavior) had been synthesized employing different techniques.