China
Africa
Explore chapters and articles related to this topic
Photoelectrochemical Process for Hydrogen Production
Published in Mu Naushad, Saravanan Rajendran, Abdullah M. Al-Enizi, New Technologies for Electrochemical Applications, 2020
Incredible growth in the development of efficient photoelectrochemical methods for production of hydrogen employing metal oxide, nonmetal oxide, nanomaterials, and biomass has been made over the past several years. In this chapter, we mainly discussed the development of a more efficient energy conversion photoelectrochemical cell in terms of reliability and durability for the production of hydrogen. However, many of the oxides, such as TiO2, ZnO2, iron-based oxides, sulfides, nitrides, and quantum dots, were used as photoelectrodes in the direct splitting of water using sunlight. Fabrications of semiconductor-materials-based photoelectrochemical cells are more efficient for energy conversion for the production of hydrogen. The attractive design and fabrication of nanomaterials-based photoelectrochemical cells can offer a high efficiency and increased durability for the production of hydrogen. Photoelectrodes produce hydrogen from the direct splitting of water using sunlight, which provides clean fuel for a green environment.
Applications of Nanomaterials
Published in Rajendra Kumar Goyal, Nanomaterials and Nanocomposites, 2017
The photoelectrochemical cells, also called photovoltaic cells or solar cells, are used for a higher-conversion efficiency of solar energy to electrical power. Solar cells are usually made of the semiconductor materials. Figure 14.5 shows the operation of a basic solar cell. Photoelectrochemical devices made up of silicon-based p–n junction material and other heterojunction material such as indium gallium phosphide, gallium arsenide, and cadmium telluride/cadmium sulfide have shown highest efficiency of ∼20%. However, the high cost of production, expensive equipment, and necessary clean-room facilities associated with the development of these devices have directed exploration of solar energy conversion to cheaper materials and devices. Nanostructures are advantageous for photoelectrochemical cell devices for efficient and higher conversion of light to electrical power due to their large surface area at which photoelectrochemical processes take place. There are several nanostructured materials such as TiO2, SnOz, ZnO, and Nb2O5, which have been studied for solar cell devices but the highest overall light conversion efficiency of these devices has achieved hardly up to 10% [23].
Synthesis Processes, Characterization Methods and Energy Related Applications of Nano-Crystalline Titanium Dioxide
Published in Kuan Yew Cheong, Two-Dimensional Nanostructures for Energy-Related Applications, 2017
Sanjeev K. Gupta, Abhinav Sharma, A. K. Garg
Photoelectrochemical cell and dye-sensitized solar cell are being used as potential technologies to convert solar energy into hydrogen (H2) fuel and electricity, respectively. There are several types of photocatalysts materials (Titanium Dioxide (TiO2), Zinc Oxide (ZnO), Zirconium Dioxide (ZrO2), Vanadium Oxide (V2O5), Tungsten Oxide (WO3), Niobium Oxide (Nb2O5), Ferric Oxide (FeO3)) from the family of multifunctional material that have been used in photoelectrochemical cell and dye-sensitized solar cell. Among them, TiO2 is one of the most promising candidates because of its superior properties such as, light absorption capabilities, chemical inertness and stability (Bettinelli et al. 2007). However, the major obstacles for achieving high efficiency TiO2 for photoelectrochemical cell and dye-sensitized solar cell are the poor visible-light absorption and quick recombination of charge carriers. The improved TiO2 photocatalysts properties have been obtained by doping with non-metal atoms such as nitrogen (Sakthivel and Kisch 2003, Reddy et al. 2005), carbon (Chen et al. 2007), sulphur or using codoped materials (Sun et al. 2006). Moreover, several attempts have also been made to decrease the bandgap energy by doping with suitable transition metals ions (Wilke and Breuer 1999) and lanthanides (Xu et al. 2002). In order to commercialize the feasibility of these aforesaid cells in terms of performance and cost effectiveness, substantial research on the development of high quality TiO2 has become a major topic of current research.
A review on synthesis and applications of versatile nanomaterials
Published in Inorganic and Nano-Metal Chemistry, 2022
G. N. Kokila, C. Mallikarjunaswamy, V. Lakshmi Ranganatha
With the increase in population worldwide, increase in the use of conventional energy resources like fossil fuel, coal, oil, natural gas, increases pollution and global temperature due to the release of harmful gases. Therefore, it is necessary to generate high energy-producing, nonpolluting, economic, and environment-friendly energy resources. Hydrogen gas is one of the energy carriers, and it is a convenient, safe, adaptable fuel that can be produced from renewable and nonrenewable energy resources.[288] Hydrogen reacts with oxygen to produce needed energy, unlike fossil fuels, which do not produce carbon dioxide when burnt. Hydrogen is an abundant element found only in combined form as in hydrocarbons, metal hydrides, H2O, and thus must be recovered. Hydrogen has a high heat of reaction and high gravimetric energy density.[289,290] Economic preferable hydrogen production, accessible storage, and transportation are significant. In liquid, gaseous, and solid form, hydrogen can be reserve and transported through pipelines or tankers.[291] Many metal hydrides, complex hydrides, adsorbents, clathrate hydrates, metalorganic frameworks, nanomaterials are used for hydrogen storage. Among these, nanomaterials can fulfill the standard hydrogen storage requirements like more hydrogen storage, having favorable or tuning thermodynamics, operate below 100 °C for H2 delivery, onboard refueling option for a hydrogen-based infrastructure, and cyclic reversibility.[294] Hydrogen can be produced from various procedures using different materials, which may also have some disadvantages. For example, hydrogen produced from steam, the photobiological process using microbes, gasification technique using coal may release more hazardous CO2, water molecule splitting using solar energy techniques, converting biomass into gas or liquid, and separating the hydrogen.[291–295] Semiconductors have resistance to photo corrosion, specific energy bandgap, and the electron–hole pair generated by the irradiation of light can move toward the surface and react with H2O or other adsorbed substances to produce hydrogen gas.[296] For the electrolysis of water to release hydrogen and oxygen, industrial electrolyzers requires high energy and investment. Hydrogen production using nanoparticles is one of the growing research areas. Therefore, recently researchers used the semiconductors as an electrode in photoelectrochemical cells and as a photocatalyst in photocatalysis of water splitting for hydrogen production.[292,293]