PECDEMO: sunlight to hydrogen
Roel van de Krol, head of the HZB Institute for Solar Fuels, coordinates the global research project PECDEMO.Photo: P.Dera/HZB
Within just three years, research partners of the EU project PECDEMO are planning on developing a practical system capable of converting over eight percent of solar energy into hydrogen. This could prove a real breakthrough in terms of practical applicability. Roel van de Krol, head of the HZB Institute for Solar Fuels, coordinates this global research project.
The official start date is set for April. The research partners will have but three years to realize their self-defined goal – a feat that is both ambitious and tangible. Together, they plan on coming up with a material system capable of converting eight percent of irradiated solar energy into hydrogen. In addition, this material system should be able to cover an area of 50 square centimeters while maintaining stability for more than a thousand hours.
“Obviously we’re taking a real chance by so explicitly defining such a specific goal,” says Prof. Dr. Roel van de Krol, the EU project’s coordinator. “But given the rapid progress we’ve made over the past five years, we’re confident we can do it. The larger area is meant to demonstrate that these types of systems don’t just work only in the lab but that they can also be upscaled to hold relevance for real-world applications.” For smaller areas, the partners are even planning on upping efficiency to ten percent.
For the PECDEMO project, van de Krol has successfully secured the talents of several renowned partners: PVcomB and DLR, Michael Graetzel’s team at the Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne, Switzerland, the Israel Institute of Technology in Haifa, Israel, as well as the University of Portugal. Partners from industry include EVONIK Industries and Solaronix SA. In all, PECDEMO has been granted funding totaling 1,83 million Euros for a three year period, of which the HZB will be receiving 440,000 Euros.
- AI agents deliver results – but do they reason scientifically?A research team co-led by Kevin Maik Jablonka from the Helmholtz Institute for Polymers in Energy Applications Jena (HIPOLE Jena) and N. M. Anoop Krishnan from the Indian Institute of Technology Delhi has developed Corral, a new benchmark for AI agents in science. The preprint “AI scientists produce results without reasoning scientifically” has been published on arXiv (https://doi.org/10.48550/arXiv.2604.18805). The analysis shows that current systems can execute scientific workflows and deliver results; however, they often do not follow the basic principles of scientific testing and reasoning.
- Magnetic field during catalyst synthesis triples ammonia yieldApplying an external magnetic field during the synthesis of CoFe₂O₄ electrocatalysts triples the ammonia yield during electrocatalytic conversion. The magnetic field alters the surface states of the spinel oxide thin films, making catalytically active sites more accessible. In the journal 'Advanced Functional Materials', a team led by Marcel Risch at HZB and Sanjay Mathur at University of Cologne demonstrates a scalable strategy for developing next-generation electrocatalysts for efficient and sustainable chemical production.
- Materials chemistry shapes the future of catalysisThe synthesis of materials can serve as a tool for developing smart, adaptive electrocatalysts. This rapidly evolving field of research involves in-situ analytics, data-driven discoveries and autonomous robotics. These new approaches could accelerate the discovery of long-lasting and efficient catalysts for future energy conversion and the decarbonisation of the chemical industry. A recent article by Dr Prashanth Menezes and his team in the renowned journal Angewandte Chemie provides an overview of this research.