On the use of aerospace technologies to design a solar thermodynamic system for hydrogen production

Abstract

There are a lot of advantages offered by the use of renewable energy in terms of minimal environmental impact compared to fossil fuels, lower costs and its great role for ensuring the sustainability of human life on planet Earth. Among all sources of renewable energy, solar energy is by far most abundant. One of the most interesting applications of this renewable source could be represented by its use for favoring the thermal dissociation of water and hence the production of hydrogen. Finally, this could be employed for example as green fuel for cars in place of fossil ones. The work focuses on possible technologies able to exploit solar energy for the dissociation of water and the production of hydrogen. The basic idea is to combine a support structure capable of achieving very high temperatures when heated by concentrated solar radiation to carry out the water decomposition via a two-step process using metal oxide redox systems. The whole process (water splitting and regeneration of the metal oxide) could be carried out in a single energy solar converter. In this scenario, the use of technologies well established and already applied to antenna subsystems design for aerospace missions would be useful in order to develop a system which is able to reach very high temperatures exploiting the solar source.