Solar-powered CO^sub 2^ reduction by a hybrid biological | inorganic system

A solar chemical and fuels industry demands CO2 reduction products beyond one-carbon molecules. We have shown that a hybrid biological | inorganic (HBI) system can use the hydrogen produced from water splitting catalysts to reduce CO2 into multi-carbon products with high energy efficiency. Here we r...

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Bibliographic Details
Published inJournal of photochemistry and photobiology. A, Chemistry. Vol. 358; p. 411
Main Authors Liu, Chong, Colón, Brendan E, Silver, Pamela A, Nocera, Daniel G
Format Journal Article
LanguageEnglish
Published Lausanne Elsevier BV 01.05.2018
Subjects
Carbon dioxide
Carbon dioxide fixation
Carbon sequestration
Catalysts
Design engineering
Electric potential
Energy efficiency
Hybrid systems
Hydrogen
Molecular chains
Nuclear fuels
Organic chemistry
Photovoltaic cells
Reactor design
Reduction
Solar cells
Solar energy
Solar power
Splitting
Voltage
Water splitting
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Summary:A solar chemical and fuels industry demands CO2 reduction products beyond one-carbon molecules. We have shown that a hybrid biological | inorganic (HBI) system can use the hydrogen produced from water splitting catalysts to reduce CO2 into multi-carbon products with high energy efficiency. Here we report the integration of the HBI device with triple-junction solar cells to complete a solar-powered water splitting | CO2 fixation cycle driven by the HBI. Solar-to-chemical efficiency (ŋsolar) of 6% averaged over 24 h are experimentally achieved with little sophisticated engineering or reactor design. We show that the limiting factor of ŋsolar in the integrated HBI system is the voltage mismatch between the output of solar cell and the input of hybrid CO2-fixing device. With a better voltage match, ŋsolar exceeding 10% can be expected.
ISSN:1010-6030
1873-2666