Solar dish plant demonstration

We have designed and are operating a solar dish plant demonstrator that is capable of producing about 0.5 kg of hydrogen per day.

The plant is based on a 7m-diameter parabolic dish concentrator that is redirecting and concentrating (up to a factor of about 900) the solar radiation into its focal spot, where it is used in our integrated photo-electrochemical reactor (with an input area of 144 cm^2) to split water into hydrogen and oxygen. The laboratory-scale device principle is described in this news article, published in Nature Energy in 2019, and described in the video: 

 

The solar dish plant demonstrator is located on EPFL campus in Lausanne:

 

Production over 4 days in August 2020 can be viewed here. The project team consists of Saurabh Tembhurne (LRESE alumni, now SoHHytec), Isaac Holmes-Gentle, and Clemens Suter. Funding came from the Swiss Federal Office of Energy, an SNF-Bridge Grant, and an SNF Starting Grant (SCOUTS).