HYDROSOL
HYDROSOL is a series of European Union funded projects for the promotion of renewable energy. Its aim is the production of hydrogen using concentrated solar power with a specific thermochemical cycle.History
The Fifth Framework Programme for Research and Technological Development project HYDROSOL started in December 2002 with a budget of €2.6 million. A pilot-scale solar reactor was designed, built and operated at the German Aerospace Center with a solar furnace facility in Cologne, continuously producing "solar hydrogen".
The FP6 HYDROSOL II is a pilot reactor of 100 kW scale for solar thermochemical hydrogen production at the Plataforma Solar de Almería in Spain, which started in November 2005 and has been in operation since 2008.
The FP7 HYDROSOL-3D project, started on January 1, 2010 and ran until January 1, 2013. The Hydrosol series projects were conceived and coordinated by the Aerosol and Particle Technology Laboratory of the Centre for Research and Technology-Hellas and Ciemat. In 2006, the Hydrosol project was awarded the Descartes Prize by the European Commission for Collaborative Scientific Research.
In early 2017, the Synlight project at the German Aerospace Centre created an artificial sun in the lab. In an effort to better optimise solar hydrogen production at scale, the electrically powered 'sun' is able to provide focussed temperatures approaching 3,000°C, far above the temperatures currently reached by commercial concentrated solar power stations.
