RESEARCH ARTICLE

A new artificial photosynthetic system coupling photovoltaic electrocatalysis with solar heating catalysis

¹ Research Center for Solar Driven Carbon Neutrality, Hebei Key Lab of Optic-electronic Information and Materials, The College of Physics Science and Technology, Institute of Life Science and Green Development, Hebei University, Baoding 071002, China
² Beijing National Laboratory for Condensed Matter Physics, Institute of Physics, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing 100190, China
³ College of Mechanical and Electrical Engineering, Hebei Agricultural University, Baoding 071001, China

^* Corresponding authors (emails: liyaguang@hbu.edu.cn (Yaguang Li); qbmeng@iphy.ac.cn (Qingbo Meng))

Received: 12 June 2023
Revised: 28 June 2023
Accepted: 10 July 2023

Abstract

In this work, we present a novel artificial photosynthetic paradigm with square meter (m²) level scalable production by integrating photovoltaic electrolytic water splitting device and solar heating CO₂ hydrogenation device, successfully achieving the synergy of 1 sun driven 19.4% solar to chemical energy efficiency (STC) for CO production (2.7 times higher than that of large-sized artificial photosynthetic systems) with a low cost (equivalent to 1/7 of reported artificial photosynthetic systems). Furthermore, the outdoor artificial photosynthetic demonstration with 1.268 m² of scale exhibits the CO generation amount of 258.4 L per day, the STC of ~15.5% for CO production in winter, which could recover the cost within 833 sunny days of operation by selling CO.