Investigations of solar thermochemical splitting of CO2 and H2O to generate CO and H2 and of physiochemical aspects of inorganic nanomaterials

Abstract

Perovskite oxides of the composition La1-xCaxMnO3 (LCM) have been investigated for the thermochemical splitting of H2O and CO2 to produce H2 and CO respectively. The study was carried out in comparison with La1-xSrxMnO3, state of art material CeO2 and other oxides. The LCM system exhibits superior characteristics in high-temperature evolution of oxygen, and in reducing CO2 to CO and H2O to H2. The production of O2 as well as CO of LCM is significantly higher than La1-xSrxMnO3 (LSM) and CeO2 too. Notably the best results are found with La0.5Ca0.5MnO3 which produces ~5 times more CO than CeO2. The orthorhombic structure of LCM seeM.S. to be a crucial factor which induces more structural distortion and helps to generate higher oxygen nonstoichiometry during reduction.