Norway
Solar-driven (Photo)electrochemical Devices for Green Hydrogen Production and Storage: Working Principles and Design
Feb 2024
Publication
The large-scale deployment of technologies that enable energy from renewables is essential for a successful transition to a carbon-neutral future. While photovoltaic panels are one of the main technologies commonly used for harvesting energy from the Sun storage of renewable solar energy still presents some challenges and often requires integration with additional devices. It is believed that hydrogen – being a perfect energy carrier – can become one of the broadly utilised storage alternatives that would effectively mitigate the energy supply and demand issues associated with the intermittent nature of renewable energy sources. Current pathways in the development of green technologies indicate the need for more sustainable material utilisation and more efficient device operation. To address this requirement integration of various technologies for renewable energy harvesting conversion and storage in a single device appears as an advantageous option. From the hydrogen economy perspective systems driven by green solar electricity that allow for (photo)electrochemical water splitting would generate hydrogen with the minimal CO2 footprint. If at the same time one of the device electrodes could store the generated gas and release it on demand the utilisation of critical and often costly elements would be reduced with possible gain in more effective device operation. Although conceptually attractive this cross-disciplinary concept has not gained yet enough attention and only limited number of experimental setups have been designed tested and reported. This review presents the first exhaustive overview and critical examination of various laboratory-scale prototype setups that attempt to combine both the hydrogen production and storage processes in a single unit via integration of a metal hydride-based electrode into a photoelectrochemical cell. The architectures of presented configurations enables direct solar energy to hydrogen conversion and its subsequent storage in a single device which – in some cases – can also release the stored (hydrogen) energy on demand. In addition this work explores perspectives and challenges related with the potential upscaling of reviewed solar-to-hydrogen storage systems trying to map and indicate the main future directions of their technological development and optimization. Finally the review also combines information and expertise scattered among various research fields with the aim of stimulating much-needed exchange of knowledge to accelerate the progress in the development and deployment of optimum green hydrogen-based solutions.
Comparison of Alternative Marine Fuels
Sep 2019
Publication
The overall ambition of the study has been to assess the commercial and operational viability of alternative marine fuels based on review existing academic and industry literature. The approach assesses how well six alternative fuels perform compared to LNG fuel on a set of 11 key parameters. Conventional fuels are not covered in this study however 2020 compliant fuels (HFO+scrubber and low sulphur fuels are included in the conclusion for comparative purposes.
Identifying and Analysing Important Model Assumptions: Combining Techno-economic and Political Feasibility of Deep Decarbonisation Pathways in Norway
Mar 2024
Publication
Understanding the political feasibility of transition pathways is a key issue in energy transitions. Policy changes are a significant source of uncertainty in energy system optimisation modelling. Energy system models are nevertheless continuously being updated to reflect policy signals as realistically as possible. Using the concept of transition pathways as a starting point this cross-disciplinary study combines energy system optimization modelling with political feasibility of different transition pathways. This combination generates insights into key political decision points in the ongoing energy transition. Resting on actor support structure and political feasibility of four main pathway categories (electrification hydrogen biomass and energy efficiency) we identify critical model assumptions that are politically significant and impact model outcome. Then by replacing the critical assumptions with technical limitations we model a scenario that is unrestrained by assumptions about policy we identify areas where political choices are key to model outcomes. The combination of actor preferences and modelled energy system consequences enables the identification of future key decision points. We find that there is considerable support for electrification as the main pathway to net-zero. The implications of widespread electrification in terms of energy production and grid capacity lead us to identify challenging policy decisions with implications for the energy transition.
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