Solar Thermochemical Fuel Generation

Solar energy is one of the most abundant, clean, and widespread energy in the world, which has the potential to address the issues of environmental pollution, global warming, and energy crisis, while the intermittent distribution of solar energy in time and space limits its utilization. Among various approaches of solar energy utilization, converting solar energy into chemical fuel (e.g., hydrogen) by thermochemical approach could maintain the steady and high-efficient energy supply and can make use of the full-spectrum solar energy. The research about solar thermochemical fuel generation lasts more than 40 years, and lots of reaction system and reactors have been proposed. This chapter reviews the state-of-the-art progress of solar thermochemical fuel generation, and the characteristics of different systems have been compared and discussed, which may give systematical insight into the development and improvement of solar fuel generation by thermochemical approach in the future.