A European Consortium Achieves Record Efficiency in Direct Conversion of CO2 and H2O into Sustainable Fuels using Earth-Abundant Materials
A European consortium coordinated by Prof. José Ramón Galán-Mascarós from the Institute of Chemical Research of Catalonia (ICIQ-CERCA) with research institutions from France, Germany, Italy, Spain and Switzerland under the A-LEAF project, reports outstanding results to make affordable and sustainable energy in a close future. The outcome of this artificial photosynthesis research project consists of an autonomous device able to convert CO2 and H2O to fuels using sunlight. This innovative cell provides a solar-to-fuel efficiency of over 10% reaching world-record current densities without the use of any critical raw materials. The scientists from IEK-5 Photovoltaics at Forschungszentrum Jülich GmbH were involved in the development of Photovoltaic module based on silicon heterojunction technology used to validate the PV-EC prototype. Together with the scientists from University of Messina an efficient coupling between the Photovoltaic and Electrochemical components was realized. This demonstrates that high productivity in CO2 reduction can also be achieved with low-cost and abundant materials with outlook for resilient upscaling.
Reference article:
Ampelli, C., Giusi, D., Miceli, M., Merdzhanova, T., Smirnov, V., Ugochi, C., Astakhov, O., Martín, A.J., Veenstra, F.L.P., Garcés Pineda, F.A., González-Cobos, J., García-Tecedor, M., Giménez, S., Jaegermann, W., Centi, G., Pérez-Ramírez, J., Galán-Mascarós, J.R. & Perathoner, S.
“An artificial leaf device built with earth-abundant materials for combined H2 production and storage as formate with efficiency > 10%”
Energy Environ. Sci https://doi.org/10.1039/D2EE03215E