| Project Detail |
Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology will develop floating catalytic membrane devices that produce green hydrogen from solar energy and wastewater.
Need
This project was selected as part of the competitive Hydrogen R&D Funding Round under the Transformative Research Accelerating Commercialisation (TRAC) Program to rapidly develop the critical technologies required to build a clean, innovative, safe, and competitive hydrogen industry and position Australia as a major player globally. While hydrogen technologies and targets have continued to evolve, R&D investment remains a critical imperative to commercialise clean hydrogen. Projects supported by the Hydrogen R&D Funding Round seek to progress the commercialisation of low cost, clean hydrogen in Australia.
At present, the process of extracting hydrogen from water via photocatalytic water splitting is inefficient and has significant barriers to commercialisation. The process is constrained by underutilisation of the full solar spectrum and is costly (~$5-7/kg of H2 compared to ~$5.5/kg of H2 for electrocatalytic water splitting).
Developing a membrane-based technology by integrating a photocatalyst with an efficient solar-thermal film represents an advancement over current photocatalytic systems. Directly producing hydrogen from a wastewater source has rarely been considered, and using an all-solar-driven floating device is a unique strategy to directly convert the source wastewater into hydrogen for downstream use. |
