Zurich/Gainesville – A joint project between Synhelion and the University of Florida will receive $2.7 million in funding from the U.S. Department of Energy. It is designed to make Synhelion’s technology for producing green hydrogen through concentrated sunlight more readily available to industry.
Synhelion and its partner, the University of Florida, will receive a $2.7 million grant from the U.S. Department of Energy ‘s Solar Energy Technologies Office. Their joint project aims to accelerate the large-scale development and deployment of Synhelion’s Concentrating Solar Thermal Power (CSP) technology, according to a media release from the Zurich-based company. This will produce green hydrogen for decarbonization of industry and for power generation and storage.
The technology of the spin-off from the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Zurich provides solar high-temperature process heat of over 1500 degrees. This is used to split water into hydrogen and oxygen. This enables the decarbonization of industrial processes and the production of synthetic fuels. Up to now, fossil gas has been used for this fission.
As part of this project, Synhelion and the University of Florida will develop a solar reactor powered by high-temperature solar thermal energy for this purpose. “By leveraging Synhelion’s technological expertise, we are able to integrate new materials into solar thermal processes,” said project leader Professor Jonathan Scheffe of the University of Florida’s Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering. He said this has “the potential to reduce the cost of hydrogen production.” ce/mm
