Solar-Driven Water Splitting for the Simultaneous Production of Green Hydrogen and Value-added Chemicals - Hydrogen peroxide (SolHydroGen)

Increasing greenhouse gas emissions primarily due to fossil fuel-related anthropogenic activities significantly contributes to climate change and global warming. Moreover, the declining fossil fuel reserves also limit its use. Alternatively, the growing technological development and wide range adoption of renewable energy resources are most urgent and vital for a sustainable society. Solar energy is an important renewable energy resource and is therefore of prime importance. However, storing solar energy in batteries is expensive, and long-distance transmission to on-demand sites is technically challenging. On the other hand, an attractive alternative is storing solar energy in chemical bonds, namely renewable fuel vectors such as hydrogen via water splitting using semiconductor catalysts. Such a 'green hydrogen' generation route has a near-zero carbon emission compared to the state of the art carbonintensive 'grey hydrogen' production process. Current solar-driven green hydrogen is not cost-competitive compared to its grey counterpart, mainly due to the anodic oxygen by-product lacking significant value. In this view, it has been proposed to co-produce high-value green chemicals such as "hydrogen peroxide" alongside green hydrogen. Therefore, SolHydroGen aims to establish a platform for the cost-effective and simultaneous production of value-added chemicals and green hydrogen by integrating the lightdriven catalyst (photoanode) combined with well-established photovoltaic cells. It is anticipated that the primary outcome of synthesizing value-added chemicals, i.e., hydrogen peroxide instead of oxygen, could reduce the Levelized cost of hydrogen by at least 20-25%, paving the way towards achieving a projected cost of green hydrogen Euro 3-4/Kg in 2030. The proposal's success is aimed at accelerating the solar energy utilization towards a sustainable renewable hydrogen market and fast-tracking towards EU/UK netzero emission goals