The Solar Hydrogen Generation Research (SHGR) project, led by the University of Nevada Las Vegas Research Foundation, will define economically feasible concepts for solar-powered production of hydrogen from water, consistent with the cost and schedule goals outlined by the Department of Energy (DOE).  The SHGR project integrates efforts that cross the program boundaries of two Department of Energy activities: the Hydrogen Fuel Cells and Infrastructure Technology Program (HFCIT) responsible for research and development of hydrogen production technologies and the Solar Energy Technology Program (SET) responsible for collection and utilization of solar thermal and photolytic energy.

Solar energy can be collected and used in at least two approaches to hydrogen production: thermal energy applied to thermochemical water splitting and photoelectrolysis of water in a photoelectrochemical process.  These two processes are completely different in their approach to hydrogen generation, but they are similar in that they both split water into oxygen and hydrogen with no other products, and they both use only solar energy and water as feedstocks.  The programmatic deliverable product is a pilot plant design and implementation plan for a solar-powered hydrogen production system that meets or beats the metrics articulated in the DOE multi-year program plan for “Hydrogen Production and Delivery”.

SHGR consists of three related tasks:

1. Solar Thermochemical Hydrogen generation (STCH)
2. Metal Oxide Laboratory studies (MOL)
3. Photoelectrochemical Hydrogen generation (PEC)

Work under Tasks 1 and 2 identifies attractive thermochemical cycles for hydrogen production.  For selected competitive cycles, the project establishes chemical feasibility and detailed kinetics data through laboratory investigations, develops process flow charts and establishes cycle thermal efficiency, develops and analyzes solar thermal energy collection and utilization systems and develops capital and operating costs for production plant concept designs. Task 3 will accelerate the development and characterization of state-of-the-art photovoltaic components coupled to durable photoactive oxide films immersed in suitable electrolytes.  The scope of this research includes performance-enhancing doping of sputtered bulk WO3 films; development of integrated Hybrid Photoelectrode (HPE) prototype designs using amorphous silicon tandem substrates with the best-available metal oxide coatings; atomic and molecular scale characterization of PEC materials and material interfaces using surface-sensitive X-ray and UV photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS and UPS) and inverse photoemission (IPES) to study the occupied and unoccupied electronic states, respectively. X-ray emission (XES) and absorption spectroscopy (XAS) will be used at the Advanced Light Source at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory to study the electronic structure of bulk materials and buried interfaces.