Solar Fuels

We used to work on solar fuels, specifically looking at the development of innovative reactors for two-step metal oxide redoc cycles. We had a project funded by ARPA-E where we were developing a new reactor concept that utilized high temperature liquid metal in order to improve the reactor efficiency. The idea was to separate the two conversion steps into a receiver that converts sunlight to heat, at high power density, and then a separate reactor that operates at much lower power density. This approach relied on the use of liquid metal to move the heat between the two subsystems and also to facilitate efficient recuperation within the reactor. Our models suggested ~ 30% efficiency could be achieved, but we couldn’t see a path to achieving much more than that, so we stopped working on it and moved on to other more potentially viable approaches.