Solar-driven reforming of waste into hydrogen

Moving beyond decarbonization to de-fossilisation is urgently needed to create a truly circular economy. The project has developed a solar-powered reactor that converts captured CO2 and plastic waste into sustainable fuels and other valuable chemical products. In their tests, CO2 was transformed into syngas, a crucial building block for sustainable liquid fuels, while plastic bottles were converted into glycolic acid, a compound widely used in the cosmetics industry.

Unlike previous tests, the project used CO2 from real-world sources, such as industrial exhaust and ambient air. They successfully captured and concentrated this CO2, converting it into sustainable fuel. While further improvements are necessary before this technology can be scaled up for industrial use, the findings, published in the journal Joule, mark a significant step toward producing clean fuels that can power the economy without relying on environmentally harmful oil and gas extraction.