Studies on the preparation of active oxygen-deficient copper ferrite and its application for hydrogen production through thermal chemical water splitting

Abstract

Hydrogen generation through thermal chemical water splitting technology has recently received increasingly international interest in the nuclear hydrogen production field. Besides the main known sulfur-iodine (S-I) cycle developed by the General Atomics Company and the UT3 cycle (iron, calcium, and bromine) developed at the University of Tokyo, the thermal cycle based on metal oxide two-step water splitting methods is also receiving research and development attention worldwide. In this work, copper ferrite was prepared by the co-precipitation method and oxygen-deficient copper ferrite was synthesized through first and second calcination steps for the application of hydrogen production by a two-step water splitting process. The crystal structure, properties, chemical composition and δ were investigated in detail by utilizing X-ray diffraction (XRD), thermogravimetry (TG) and differential thermal analysis (DTA), atomic absorption spectrometer (AAS), ultraviolet spectrophotometry (UV), gas chromatography (GC), and so on. The experimental two-step thermal chemical cycle reactor for hydrogen generation was designed and developed in this lab. The hydrogen generation process of water splitting through CuFe2O4−δ and the cycle performance of copper ferrite regeneration were firstly studied and discussed.