Background The creation of effective energy conversion technologies has become essential in response to the challenges of integrating diurnally and seasonally intermittent and variable renewable energy resources. Specifically, one of the most important steps toward the economical production of sustainable fuels and organic chemicals is the conversion...

Background Thermochemical cycles (TCCs) for water or carbon dioxide splitting involve redox active metal oxides and use high temperatures sourced from concentrated solar power or other renewable pathways to produce either hydrogen and oxygen from water, or carbon monoxide and oxygen from carbon dioxide with no direct greenhouse gas emissions. In the...

The entire human food system is photosynthesis-based, i.e. it originates as plant matter/biomass. Contrary to popular perception, domestic animals are not the most inefficient link in the human food chain, photosynthesis in plants is. While the theoretical energy efficiency of photosynthesis is about 26%, when you take into account nonabsorbable incident...

Background Thermochemical energy storage has many practical implementation challenges, one of which is creating and maintaining a low oxygen partial pressure (pO2) during the thermal reduction step. In order to reduce the pO2, current approaches are to either purge the reactor with an inert sweep gas, or vacuum pumping. However, both of these approaches...

Background Oxygen (O2) sorption materials can be used as a means for either producing a low partial pressure of oxygen (PO2) environment for chemical processes or in the production of O2 rich gas (>21 %) from leaner O2 gas streams (O2 composition < 21% down to PO2 < 10 Pa or lower). Oxygen removal and O2 enrichment are critical processes in...

Background An aircraft’s auxiliary power unit (APU) provides electrical and pneumatic power for such functions as lighting, ice clearing, engine starting, and cabin air conditioning. The use of dual chamber solid oxide fuel cells (DC-SOFCs) increases efficiency and reduces NOx emissions, but results in lower power densities compared to conventional...