• Journal of the Korean Solar Energy Society
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• v.37 no.2
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• pp.13-22
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• 2017

Two-step water splitting thermochemical cycle with $CeO_2/ZrO_2$ foam device was investigated by using a solar simulator composed of 2.5 kW Xe-Arc lamp and mirror reflector. The hydrogen production of $CeO_2/ZrO_2$ foam device depending on heat recovery of Thermal-Reduction step and Water-Decomposition step was analyzed, and the hydrogen production of $CeO_2/ZrO_2$ and $NiFe_2O_4/ZrO_2$ foam devices was compared. Resultantly, the quantity of hydrogen generation increased by 52.02% when the carrier gas of Thermal-Reduction step is preheated to $200^{\circ}C$ and, when the $N_2/steam$ is preheated to $200^{\circ}C$ in the Water-Decomposition step, the quantity of hydrogen generation increased by 35.85%. Therefore, it is important to retrieve the heat from the highly heated gases discharged from each of the reaction spaces in order to increase the reaction temperature of each of the stages and thereby increasing the quantity of hydrogen generated through this.

• Journal of the Korean Solar Energy Society
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• v.34 no.6
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• pp.11-18
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• 2014

Two-step water splitting thermochemical cycle with $CeO_2$ foam device was investigated by using a solar simulator composed of 2.5 kW Xe-Arc lamp and mirror reflector. The hydrogen production of $CeO_2$ foam device depending on reaction temperature of Thermal-Reduction step and Water-Decomposition step was analyzed, and the hydrogen production of $CeO_2$ and $NiFe_2O_4/ZrO_2$ foam devices was compared. As a result, the amount of reduced $CeO_2$ considerably varies according to the reaction temperature of Thermal-Reduction step. and hydrogen production was not much when the amount of reduced $CeO_2$ decreased even if the reaction temperature of Water-Decomposition step was high. Therefore, it is very important to keep the reaction temperature of Thermal-Reduction step high in two-step thermochemical cycle with $CeO_2$.

• Journal of Electrochemical Science and Technology
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• v.13 no.3
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• pp.377-389
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• 2022

The current global energy supply depends heavily on fossil fuels. This makes technology such as direct water splitting from harvesting solar energy in photoelectrochemical (PEC) systems potentially attractive due to its a promising route for environmentally benign hydrogen production. In this study, undoped and nickel-doped molybdenum oxide photoanodes (called photoanodes S₁ and S₂ respectively) were synthesized through electrodeposition by applying -1.377 V vs Ag/AgCl (3 M KCl) for 3 hours on an FTO-coated glass substrate immersed in molibdatecitrate aqueous solutions at pH 9. Scanning electron microscopy (SEM), atomic force microscopy (AFM), energy-dispersive X-ray spectroscopy (EDS), and X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS) were used for microstructural and compositional characterizations of the photoanodes. In addition, the optical and photoelectrochemical characterizations of these photoanodes were performed by UV-Visible spectroscopy, and linear scanning voltammetry (LSV) respectively. The results showed that all the photoanodes produced exhibit conductivity and catalytic properties that make them attractive for water splitting application in a photoelectrochemical cell. In this context, the photoanode S₂ exhibited better photocatalytic activity than the photoanode S₁. In addition, photoanode S₂ had the lowest optical band-gap energy value (2.58 eV), which would allow better utilization of the solar spectrum.

• Proceedings of the Korean Society of Potoscience Conference
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• spring
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• pp.23-24
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• 1999

• Proceedings of the Korean Vacuum Society Conference
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• 2013.08a
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• pp.70-70
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• 2013

As the costs of carbon-footprinetd fuels grow continuously and simultaneously atmospheric carbon dioxide concentration increases, solar fuels are receiving growing attention as alternative clean energy carriers. These fuels include molecular hydrogen and hydrogen peroxide produced from water, and hydrocarbons converted from carbon dioxide. For high efficiency solar fuel production, not only light absorbers (oxide semiconductors, Si, inorganic complexes, etc) should absorb most sunlight, but also charge separation and interfacial charge transfers need to occur efficiently. With this in mind, this talk will introduce the fundamentals of solar fuel production and artificial photosynthesis, and then discuss in detail on photoelectrochemical (PEC) water splitting and CO2 conversion. This talk largely divides into two section: PEC water oxidation and PEC CO2 reduction. The former is very important for proton-coupled electron transfer to CO2. For this oxidation, a variety of oxide semiconductors have been tested including TiO2, ZnO, WO3, BiVO4, and Fe2O3. Although they are essentially capable of oxidizing water into molecular oxygen, the efficiency is very low primarily because of high overpotentials and slow kinetics. This challenge has been overcome by coupling with oxygen evolving catalysts (OECs) and/or doping donor elements. In the latter, surface-modified p-Si electrodes are fabricated to absorb visible light and catalyze the CO2 reduction. For modification, metal nanoparticles are electrodeposited on the p-Si and their PEC performance is compared.

• 한국태양에너지학회:학술대회논문집
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• 2012.03a
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• pp.113-119
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• 2012

The two-step water splitting thermochemical cycle is composed of the T-R (Thermal Reduction) and W-D (Water Decomposition) steps. The mechanism of this cycle is oxidation-reduction, which produces hydrogen. The reaction temperature necessary for this thermochemical cycle can be achieved by a dish-type solar thermal collector (Inha University, Korea). The purpose of this study is to validate a water splitting device in the field. The device is studied and fabricated by Kodama et al (2010, 2011). The validation results show that the foam device, when loaded with $CeO_2$ powder, was successfully achieved hydrogen production under field conditions. Through this experiment, we can analyze the characteristics of the catalyst and able to determine which is more advantageous thing to produce hydrogen compared with previous experiment that used ferrite-device.

• Proceedings of the Korean Institute of Surface Engineering Conference
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• 2018.06a
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• pp.50.2-50.2
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• 2018

The demand for steady and dependable power sources is very high in the field of sustainable energy because of the limited amount of fossil fuels reserves. Among several sustainable alternatives, solar energy may be the most efficient solution because it constitutes the largest renewable energy source. So far, the only practical way to store such large amounts of energy has been to use a chemical energy carrier likewise a fuel. In various solar energy to power conversion systems, the photoelectrochemical (PEC) splitting of water into hydrogen and oxygen by the direct use of solar energy is an ideal process. It is a renewable method of hydrogen production integrated with solar energy absorption and water electrolysis using a single photoelectrode. Previous studies on photoelectrode films for PEC water splitting cells have been mainly focused on synthesizing oxide semiconductors with wide band gaps, such as TiO2(3.2eV), WO3(2.8eV), and Fe2O3(2.3eV). Unfortunately, these pristine oxide photoanodes without any catalysts have relatively low photocurrent densities because of the inherent limitation of insufficient visible light absorption due to the wide bandgap. Specifically, there is a tradeoff between high photocurrent and photoelectrochemical corrosion behavior, which is representative of figures of meritf or PEC materials.

• 한국태양에너지학회:학술대회논문집
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• 2011.11a
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• pp.169-176
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• 2011

The two-step water splitting thermochemical cycle is composed of the T-R (Thermal Reduction)and W-D (Water Decomposition)steps. The mechanism of this cycle is oxidation-reduction, which produces hydrogen. The reaction temperature necessary for this thermochemical cycle can be achieved by a dish-type solar thermal collector (Inha University, Korea). The purpose of this study is to validate a water splitting device in the field. The device is studied and fabricated by Kodama et al (2010, 2011). The validation results show that the foam device, when loaded with $NiFe_2O_4/m-ZrO_2$powder, was successfully achieved hydrogen production with 9 (10 with a Xe-light solar simulator, 2009, Kodama et al.) repeated cycles under field conditions. Two foam device used in this study were tested for validation before an experiment was performed. The lab scale ferrite-conversion rate was in the range of 24~76%. Two foam devices were designed to for structural stability in this study. In the results of the experiments, the hydrogen percentage of the weight of each foam device was 7.194 and $9.954{\mu}mol\;g^{-1}$ onaverage, and the conversion rates 4.49~29.97 and 2.55~58.83%, respectively.

• Rapid Communication in Photoscience
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• v.1 no.2
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• pp.39-39
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• 2012

• Korean Chemical Engineering Research
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• v.45 no.5
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• pp.415-423
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• 2007

Photocatalytic water splitting (PWS) is the most promising technology to produce $H_2$ energy directly from renewable water and solar light. In spite of the remarkable progress made in the last decade, there are still many technical challenges remaining particularly in finding new photocatalytic materials with high efficiency and durability. This article discusses the application of nanocomposite materials in search of new photocatalytic materials for solar hydrogen production from water. It has been demonstrated that smart combination and modification of known materials and functions could be fruitful approach for the purpose.