ICIQ hosts the SOLFuture project meeting

On March 2^nd, ICIQ has hosted the SOLFuture (Solar Catalysis for a Renewable Energy Future) partners meeting. This session has been the technical follow-up to share the progress made during the first 12 months.

ICIQ research groups of Prof. Emilio Palomares and Prof. Pau Ballester are involved in the project, which is coordinated by IMDEA Energy Institute, and also counts with the collaboration of ICMM-CSIC, ICMSe-CSIC, PSA-CIEMAT, Apria Systems and CEPSA, with the objective of perform multidisciplinary industrial research projects, working for the efficient solar light conversion to fuels and chemicals in public-private collaboration.

Solar energy conversion and storage is one of the most promising strategies to achieve the purpose of implementing new systems to produce sustainable fuels and chemicals by the integration of renewable energy sources.

In this sense, SOLFuture is the base of a country strategy foundation for the efficient solar energy conversion to sustainable fuels and commodity chemicals through the development of reliable and efficient technologies.

SOLFuture proposes two new concepts of photoreactor prototypes for the generation of value-added products and fuels (H₂, CH₄, C₂⁺, NH₃ and chemical platforms). To achieve this objective a combined strategy based in two complementary approaches has been designed.

On one hand, the development of photocatalytic technologies, based on the production of H₂ from wastewater and biomass as reductant.

The second approach consists in the construction of a photo(electro)chemical (PEC) cell combining a hybrid photocathode, formed by organic-inorganic heterojunctions of the previously commented materials but in their thin-film form, and a PV-EC photoanode, made by the coupling of an organic solar cell and a highly active porous anode decorated with co-catalyst nanoparticles selected depending on the target product. These reactions are performed both in liquid (PSA) and gas phase (IMDEA) depending on the selected residue using hybrid organo/inorganic heterojunctions based on metal oxides and conjugated porous polymers (CPPs).

The SolFuture project began on November 2021 and will finish on November 2024 and has an overall budget of 1.148.591,38 €.

SOLFuture (PLEC2021- 007906/ AEI / 10.13039/501100011033) project has been funded thanks to the Plan de Recuperación para Europa ‘NextGenerationEU‘