A photothermocatalytic reactor and selective solar absorber for sustainable fuel synthesis
Creators
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1.
California Institute of Technology
Abstract
Utilizing solar thermal energy for thermochemical processes enables the sustainable generation of fuels and chemicals. Here, we present a scalable photothermocatalytic reactor with a selective solar absorber that converts sunlight into thermal energy for fuel synthesis. The absorber achieves a maximum temperature of 249°C under one-sun illumination and 130°C under ambient operating conditions (25°C, 1 atm). The application of the photothermocatalytic reactor was demonstrated using an ethylene oligomerization reaction, which is used in industry. A homogeneous reaction was performed in a batch mode and yielded a distribution of liquid hydrocarbons with 6–24 carbon atoms. A heterogeneous reaction was performed in a flowthrough configuration, yielding butene and hexene products. Finally, simulated results for a larger-scale reactor predict spatially uniform maximum temperatures up to 120°C and 210°C under one- and three-sun illumination, demonstrating the potential to generate fuels at bigger scales.
Acknowledgement
This work was funded by the Liquid Sunlight Alliance, supported by the U.S. Department of Energy, Office of Science, Office of Basic Energy Sciences, Fuels from Sunlight Hub under award number DE-SC0021266. We gratefully acknowledge the critical support and infrastructure provided for this work by The Kavli Nanoscience Institute at Caltech. We thank Manar Shoshani for performing initial ethylene oligomerization experiments using a SHOP Ni catalyst. A.A. acknowledges support from the Kavli Nanoscience Institute Postdoctoral Fellowship.
Copyright and License
© 2024 Elsevier Inc. All rights are reserved, including those for text and data mining, AI training, and similar technologies.
Supplemental Material
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Document S1. Figures S1–S16, Tables S1–S4, and Notes S1–S4.
Download: Download Acrobat PDF file (6MB)Document S2. Article plus supplemental information.
Data Availability
All data needed to evaluate the conclusions in the paper are present in the paper and the supplemental information.
Contributions
M.P.S. and H.A.A. developed the research idea. M.P.S. modeled and fabricated the photothermocatalytic reactor. X.L. and A.A. contributed to the reactor design. M.P.S. and A.A. characterized and tested the reactor. M.S., S.X., and M.E. synthesized the homogeneous and heterogeneous catalysts and contributed to homogeneous ethylene oligomerization experiments. J.C.P., T.A., and H.A.A. supervised the project. M.S. and A.A. wrote the manuscript with revision and participation from all authors.
Conflict of Interest
The authors declare no competing interests.
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Additional details
Funding
- California Institute of Technology
- Kavli Nanoscience Institute Postdoctoral Fellowship
- Office of Basic Energy Sciences
- Fuels from Sunlight Hub DE-SC0021266
Dates
- Accepted
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2024-10-10Accepted
- Available
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2024-11-09Published online