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  • Review Article
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Solar reforming as an emerging technology for circular chemical industries

Nature Reviews Chemistry volume 8, pages 87–105 (2024)Cite this article

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Abstract

The adverse environmental impacts of greenhouse gas emissions and persistent waste accumulation are driving the demand for sustainable approaches to clean-energy production and waste recycling. By coupling the thermodynamically favourable oxidation of waste-derived organic carbon streams with fuel-forming reduction reactions suitable for producing clean hydrogen or converting CO2 to fuels, solar reforming simultaneously valorizes waste and generates useful chemical products. With appropriate light harvesting, catalyst design, device configurations and waste pre-treatment strategies, a range of sustainable fuels and value-added chemicals can already be selectively produced from diverse waste feedstocks, including biomass and plastics, demonstrating the potential of solar-powered upcycling plants. This Review highlights solar reforming as an emerging technology that is currently transitioning from fundamental research towards practical application. We investigate the chemistry and compatibility of waste pre-treatment, introduce process classifications, explore the mechanisms of different solar reforming technologies, and suggest appropriate concepts, metrics and pathways for various deployment scenarios in a net-zero-carbon future.

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Fig. 1: Overview of current and future economic models.
Fig. 2: Solar reforming categories and deployment architectures.
Fig. 3: Solar-driven waste reforming process.
Fig. 4: Thermodynamics of solar reforming and artificial photosynthesis.
Fig. 5: Overview of photocatalytic (PC) reforming.
Fig. 6: Photoelectrochemical (PEC) and photovoltaic–electrochemical (PV–EC) reforming systems.

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Acknowledgements

This Review was supported by the Cambridge Trust (HRH The Prince of Wales Commonwealth Scholarship to S.B.), EPSRC NanoDTC (grant EP/S022953/1, NanoFutures Leadership Award to S.B.), Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada (NSERC to S.L.), a European Research Council (ERC) Proof of Concept Grant (SolReGen, grant 966581 to E.R.) and the Hermann und Marianne Straniak Stiftung (to E.R.). M. Rahaman and T. Bouwens (University of Cambridge) are acknowledged for the useful feedback on the manuscript.

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  1. These authors contributed equally: Subhajit Bhattacharjee, Stuart Linley.

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  1. Yusuf Hamied Department of Chemistry, University of Cambridge, Cambridge, UK

    Subhajit Bhattacharjee, Stuart Linley & Erwin Reisner

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S.B. and E.R. conceived the design and structure of the Review. S.B. and S.L. wrote the Review and constructed the figures. E.R. reviewed and edited the manuscript, contributed references and discussions, and supervised the writing. All authors have read and approved the final manuscript.

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A patent application (application number GB2301443.4) covering solar reforming of plastics coupled to enzyme pre-treatment has been filed by Cambridge Enterprise with S.B. and E.R. listed as co-inventors.

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Bhattacharjee, S., Linley, S. & Reisner, E. Solar reforming as an emerging technology for circular chemical industries. Nat Rev Chem 8, 87–105 (2024). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41570-023-00567-x

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