Solar Hybrid Water Splitting Cycle With Integrated Thermal Storage

Solar thermochemical water splitting cycles can potentially produce overall efficiencies of 30-40%, however, all existing cycles suffer from a number of shortcomings. A novel solar-powered hybrid water splitting cycle was developed at Florida Solar Energy Center by introducing ammonia as a working reagent to hybrid-sulfur cycle to allow more efficient solar interface, facile product separation steps and all-fluid operation ( Sulfur-Ammonia, or SA, cycle). The main advantages of the SA cycle is that through introduction of M2SO4 and M2S2O7 sub-cycles, it allows for efficient thermal energy storage and recovery in wide temperature range as part of the cycle operation. Using pyrosulfate (M2S2O7) sub-cycle also allows conducting all-fluid operation