The study of hydrogen generation with photoreactor

From the viewpoints of fuel and energy, solar energy is the ultimate energy resource of all life on earth. Using solar energy and photocatalyst to produce clean fuel such as hydrogen has been attracted more and more attentions due to the energy and environmental problems. At the present time, there are various semiconductor materials that have the ability to decompose water into H2 and O2 under UV light or visible light (λ>400nm). There is a great potential for hydrogen production with solar energy and these new photocatalyst materials. For the engineering applications, reactor design technology is another key point. However only few researches about the photo reactor design were published. In this work, the theoretical analysis on hydrogen production from water splitting process and methane generation with photocatalyst were studied. The operation conditions such as temperatures,pressures and PH values were analyzed with thermodynamic and electrochemical theory. The theoretic operation conditions and requirements of photocatalyst materials for chemical reactions were presented. (author)