GH2 Researchers Generate 70% Quantum Yield in Light-Driven Production of Hydrogen

A more efficient means of capturing and projecting solar energy to produce green hydrogen has reached 70% efficacy in laboratory testing under the leadership of Dr. Oleksandr Savateev at the Max Planck Institute of Colloids and Interfaces.

Dr Savateev and his team, who are part of the EU-funded GH2 project, began developing a new photocatalyst to capture solar energy using agricultural fertilizer six months ago.

The project team achieved this remarkable early-stage success by adjusting the structure of the photocatalyst and parameters of hydrogen production from ethanol, the product of carbohydrates fermentation.

An ambitious project, GH2 aims to harness solar energy to develop a groundbreaking hydrogen production process that will neither use nor produce CO2 or environmentally harmful methane.

Ultimately, the project seeks to establish a sustainable source of on-demand hydrogen that could be employed across multiple industries including transport, energy, agriculture and construction.

As such, Dr Savateev believes that this early success represents a significant step toward the project achieving its ambition.

“Today, huge amounts of energy and resources are required to produce hydrogen, including methane, natural gas and other types of hydrocarbon raw materials, as well as water electrolysis.

As this isn’t sustainable, it has stimulated an intensive search for alternative ways of producing hydrogen, particularly from renewable energy sources.

One of these sources can be the inexhaustible light energy of the Sun. An essential component of this so-called photocatalytic process is a photocatalyst.

We want to develop a photocatalyst that harvests solar light and uses the Sun’s energy to drive the synthesis of hydrogen”.

Although still at a laboratory stage, the project is generating up to 34 ml of hydrogen per hour according to Dr. Vitaliy Shvalagin.

This represents a significant success, particularly as the project’s hydrogen production method simultaneously produces high-value geminal diether, used in the food industry and as a fuel additive, as a by-product.

“The photocatalyst effectively transforms ethanol into high-value geminal diether. In that sense, the process is similar to natural photosynthesis.

This is what makes the GH2 project hugely exciting. Although we’re currently working on a single component, you can already see how the project could potentially be applied across multiple industries.

Our next steps involves the optimization of process parameters to further improve efficiency of light utilization and the development of a lab-scale setup to study its operation under outdoor solar light to reach higher technology readiness level”.

This project has received funding from the European Union's Horizon Europe research and innovation programme under grant agreement No 101070721. The press release reflects only the authors' view and the European Commission is not responsible for any use that may be made of the information it contains.