The development of luminescent solar concentrator-based photomicroreactors: a cheap reactor enabling efficient solar-powered photochemistry

S.D.A. Zondag, Tom Masson, Michael G. Debije, Timothy Noël (Corresponding author)

Research output: Contribution to journalArticleAcademicpeer-review

20 Citations (Scopus)
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Abstract

Sunlight strikes our planet every day with more energy than we consume in an entire year. Therefore, many researchers have explored ways to efficiently harvest and use sunlight energy for the activation of organic molecules. However, implementation of this energy source in the large-scale production of fine chemicals has been mostly neglected. The use of solar energy for chemical transformations suffers from potential drawbacks including scattering, reflections, cloud shading and poor matches between the solar emission and absorption characteristics of the photochemical reaction. In this account, we provide an overview of our efforts to overcome these issues through the development of Luminescent Solar Concentrator-based PhotoMicroreactors (LSC-PM). Such reactors can efficiently convert solar energy with a broad spectral distribution to concentrated and wavelength-shifted irradiation which matches the absorption maximum of the photocatalyst. Hence, the use of these conceptually new photomicroreactors provides an increased solar light harvesting capacity, enabling efficient solar-powered photochemistry.
Original languageEnglish
Pages (from-to)705-717
Number of pages13
JournalPhotochemistry and Photobiological Sciences
Volume21
Issue number5
Early online date2021
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - May 2022

Keywords

  • Automation
  • Luminescent solar concentrators
  • Microreactor
  • Ray tracing simulations
  • Scale-up
  • Solar photochemistry
  • Solar Energy
  • Luminescence
  • Sunlight
  • Photochemistry

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