Recent Progress on Hydrogen Production From Solar-Thermal Water Splitting

Abstract

The development of renewable energy is a huge opportunity and challenge in the energy field. As the ultimate energy source, solar energy is one of the most reliable energy sources among the renewable energies. Solar water splitting for hydrogen production is one of the most promising technologies of solar energy utilization, in recent decades. As an ideal clean energy source, hydrogen has made a significant breakthrough in transportation and storage technologies and hydrogen is also of great significance for applications such as chemical synthesis and energy storage. This paper reviews the basic methods and development of hydrogen production from solar water splitting, including photovoltaic, photoelectrochemical, and photothermal methods. In view of the photothermal method-solar thermochemical hydrogen production technology, this paper analyzes the thermodynamics, summarizes its future development perspectives. Furthermore, this paper also points out some new ideas for the realization of solar-thermal water splitting for hydrogen production.