New Magnetic Core-Metal Oxide Shell Nanoparticles for Photocatalytic Water-Splitting

用于光催化水分解的新型磁核-金属氧化物壳纳米粒子

• 批准号: 2581025
• 金额: --
• 依托单位: University of Oxford
• 依托单位国家: 英国
• 项目类别: Studentship
• 财政年份: 2021
• 资助国家: 英国
• 起止时间: 2021 至 无数据
• 项目状态: 未结题
• 来源: https://gtr.ukri.org/projects?ref=studentship-2581025
• 关键词: New; Magnetic; Core; Metal; Oxide

During this DPhil project, research will focus on the design of novel technologies that use sunlight and water to produce hydrogen fuel. This project falls within the ESPRC Energy research area.The extreme weather caused by global warming is already creating humanitarian crisis. Due to severe droughts, people in Niger are fighting to stop their land turning into an inhospitable desert; Madagascar has seen four major storms in just one month (February 2022) that have "wrecked the island nation"; warming of the oceans threatens all its inhabitants and consequently, the lives of 3 billion people that depend on the food from the ocean and its coasts. As is commonly known, a major cause of global warming is rising carbon dioxide (CO2) levels in the atmosphere. CO2 is a greenhouse gas which traps heat, preventing its escape from Earth into space. CO2 emissions released from burning of fossils fuels, such as petrol, diesel, and coal, are significantly contributing to the rising atmospheric levels. This highlights why there is a great need for green alternatives to fossil fuels. Hydrogen (H2) is a realistic alternative green fuel. The emissions of H2 fuel are very clean and carbon-free; when burnt, H2 reacts with oxygen to produce only water. Further, gram for gram, significantly more energy is released when burning H2 compared to any fossil fuel.Before H2 can replace fossil fuels, a few technological challenges need overcoming. One of these challenges is producing H2 in a carbon-free and sustainable way. A promising solution, known as solar-catalytic water-splitting (SCWS), uses specifically designed technology to generate H2 from sunlight and water. This technology is incredibly sustainable. It uses two of the most abundant resources available to mankind - the sun and the sea. Due to low H2-generation efficiencies, SCWS technology is not currently commercially-viable. When SCWS systems absorb sunlight, they convert the solar energy into useful reaction energy and much-less-useful heat energy. The reaction energy converts water to H2. Current SCWS technologies have low efficiencies because they convert too much of the sunlight into heat energy and not enough into reaction energy.The research in this project will focus on designing new, more efficient SCWS technology that can use sunlight more effectively by converting a higher proportion of the absorbed solar energy into useful reaction energy for H2 generation. The approach of this research is to use known advantageous design features of various current SCWS systems and combine them into one highly efficient SCWS system. New advantageous features may also be discovered in this process. The main challenge will be figuring out how to make the new systems as this chemistry can be tricky and unpredictable. Through contributions from this research and from research by other scientists in the field, hopefully one day, SCWS technology will be used to sustainably generate H2 fuel anywhere that water and sunlight are available.

在这个博士项目中，研究将集中在利用阳光和水生产氢燃料的新技术的设计上。该项目福尔斯ESPRC能源研究领域，全球变暖导致的极端天气已经造成人道主义危机。由于严重的干旱，尼日尔的人们正在努力阻止他们的土地变成荒凉的沙漠;马达加斯加在短短一个月内（2022年2月）经历了四次大风暴，这些风暴“摧毁了这个岛国”;海洋变暖威胁着所有居民，因此，30亿人的生命依赖于海洋和海岸的食物。众所周知，全球变暖的一个主要原因是大气中二氧化碳（CO2）水平的上升。二氧化碳是一种温室气体，它能捕获热量，防止热量从地球逃逸到太空。燃烧化石燃料（如汽油、柴油和煤炭）释放的二氧化碳排放量是大气水平上升的重要原因。这突出说明了为什么非常需要化石燃料的绿色替代品。氢气（H2）是一种现实的替代绿色燃料。氢气燃料的排放物非常清洁，不含碳;燃烧时，氢气与氧气反应，只生成水。此外，每克燃烧氢气时释放的能量比任何化石燃料都要多得多。在氢气取代化石燃料之前，还需要克服一些技术挑战。这些挑战之一是以无碳和可持续的方式生产氢气。一个有前途的解决方案，称为太阳能催化水分解（SCWS），使用专门设计的技术从阳光和水中产生H2。这项技术是非常可持续的。它利用了人类最丰富的两种资源--太阳和海洋。由于H2生成效率低，SCWS技术目前在商业上不可行。当SCWS系统吸收太阳光时，它们将太阳能转化为有用的反应能和有用得多的热能。反应能量将水转化为H2。目前的SCWS技术效率低，因为它们将太多的太阳能转化为热能，而不足以转化为反应能。本项目的研究将集中在设计新的，更有效的SCWS技术，通过将更高比例的吸收的太阳能转化为有用的反应能来产生H2，从而更有效地利用太阳能。本研究的方法是利用目前各种SCWS系统的已知的有利设计特征，并将它们联合收割机组合成一个高效的SCWS系统。在该过程中还可以发现新的有利特征。主要的挑战将是弄清楚如何制造新系统，因为这种化学反应可能是棘手和不可预测的。通过这项研究和该领域其他科学家的研究，希望有一天，SCWS技术将用于在任何有水和阳光的地方可持续地产生H2燃料。