Sustainable and Sealable Thermochemistry for Hydrogen Production

One of the biggest challenges for the 21st century is to meet people’s growing need for affordable energy, while mitigating climate change by decreasing greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions at Gigaton (Gt) scale. Thermochemical processes are the only type of Gt-scale processes developed by human beings up to today. I believe it is imperative to create scalable and sustainable thermochemical processes to transform energy and chemical industries.

Cheap and GHG-free hydrogen is a critical missing piece to address the climate challenge. I will firstly present material design strategies and technoeconomics of thermochemical splitting of water. At the materials level, I tuned solid-solid phase transformation in high entropy oxides and ferrite oxides to give many times higher water/CO2 splitting capacity than conventional materials. Additionally, I will show our recent work on methane pyrolysis to produce high-value solid carbon and H2. Specifically, we regenerated the coked catalyst to achieve semi-continuous methane pyrolysis.

Currently, we are developing materials and system for GHG-neutral thermochemical processes, with collaborations to integrate thermal sciences, materials science, process systems engineering, and life-cycle analysis.