Hydrogen Production
1. Hydrogen production
One of the key challenges to the hydrogen economy of the future is to generate sufficient hydrogen to satisfy demand. Currently, H2 is sourced from hydrocarbons and coal, which negates the reduction in carbon emissions gained in using H2.
1.1 Hydrogen production from biomass and waste fuels
An alternative is to use renewable fuels such as biomass and non-recyclable wastes as a source of H2. Biomass fuels currently account for 14 % of global energy supply.
The objective of this project is to determine the optimum conditions to selectively produce hydrogen from biomass and waste fuels using a fluidised-bed gasification process coupled with in-situ carbon dioxide sequestration.
Neutron-scattering techniques will be used to monitor the hydrogen generation reactions, in-situ where possible. This will enable the elucidation of the synthesis mechanisms and ultimately identify optimum conditions for large-scale, sustainable hydrogen production.
1.2 Hydrogen production from the photoelectrocatalytic splitting of water
Semi-conducting metal oxides such as TiO2, WO3, and Fe2O3 have been intensively studied for their photocatalytic properties. While TiO2 is arguably the most studied photocatalytic material because of its stability, its activity is ultimately limited by its wide band-gap, which results in a maximum absorption of only 3 % of the solar spectrum.
This research is currently not being pursued past what was achieved during the 2007-2009 period, although we anticipate continued work in this area in the future. Research has focussed previously on heteronanostructured porous thin films with complex architectures, including addressing in greater detail the electronic properties of the relatively 'simple' WO3 TiO2 multilayer thin films investigated earlier in an attempt to understand the particular activities of sandwich materials (TiO2-WO3-TiO2-Ti).