Simulation of sunlight driven CO2 conversion to CH4 to satisfy a single-house heating requirements

• Autor(a) principal: Sarmento, Bernardo Fitas
• Data de Publicação: 2018
• Tipo de documento: Dissertação
• Idioma: eng
• Título da fonte: Repositório Científico de Acesso Aberto de Portugal (Repositórios Cientìficos)
• Texto Completo: http://hdl.handle.net/10362/58233
• topic: Systems Simulations; Artificial Photosynthesis; Photovoltaic-Electrochemical CH4 production; Methanation; Building Integrated Solar Fuels; TRNSYS modelling; Domínio/Área Científica::Engenharia e Tecnologia::Engenharia dos Materiais

The rise of Earth’s atmospheric CO2 levels, primarily due to combustion of fossil fuels, has affected its ecosystems. A way to combat this is by mimicking the plants photosynthesis by capturing CO2 from the atmosphere and convert it to usable hydrocarbon fuels, such as methane (CH4), because of the easy adaptability to the well-established infrastructure for natural gas (NG) storage, distribution and consumption. The denominated “solar methane”, very similar to NG, can be produced by converting solar energy from photovoltaic (PV) panels into electricity to power a 1-step reaction on electrochemical flow cell(s), using CO2 and water as the feedstock. Here, we simulate solar methane production and storage and apply it to address the energetic needs of concept buildings that have space and domestic hot water heating requirements. A combination of solar thermal collectors (STCs) and PV panels is optimized for buildings in different European locations, in which the heating needs that cannot be fulfilled by the STCs are satisfied by the combustion of methane synthesized by the PV-powered electrolyzers. Various combinations of situations for a whole year were studied and it was found that this auxiliary system can produce, per m2 of PV area, in the worst case scenario 23.6 g/day (0.328 kWh/day) of methane in Stockholm and in the best case scenario 47.4 g/day (0.658 kWh/day) in Lisbon.