Solar-to-X
Solar Hub
Solar-to-X technologies
Solar-to-X technologies are essential in a resilient and low-carbon future. They include many different technologies summarized below in terms of maturity and energy sources.
While the focus today is on the top part of technologies, being at higher TRL, we indicated that instead integration is the challenge AND the real opportunity. It is necessary to pass directly to the 2nd generation of integrated technologies rather than use multistep technologies (e-fuels) which development will represent a waste of time and resources.
The future of solar-to-X technologies is to develop integrated, complex technologies which comply with the vision for a resilient and low-carbon future. We thus envision the role of artificial leaf/tree-like devices as the key direction to address the future challenges, even the progress requires to develop many intermediate steps, even if the final goal can be reached before 2050, if sufficient resources will be dedicated.
Our effort in the Solar HUB is to to develop these future Artificial Photosynthesis Devices (APD) which integrates all the functionalities, including capturing the feed from the air, and that can enable a low-cost distributed production of solar chemicals and fuels.
G. Centi, S. Perathoner, Making chemicals from the air: the new frontier for hybrid electrosyntheses in artificial tree-like devices. Green Chem. 26, 15-41 (2024).