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The thousand-ton-scale “Liquid Solar Fuel Synthesis Demonstration Project” passed the evaluation of scientific and technological achievements. Author/Source: Sinochem News Network. Date: October 16, 2020. Clicks: 3. On October 15, the thousand-ton-scale “Liquid Solar Fuel Synthesis Demonstration Project” underwent an evaluation of its scientific and technological achievements organized by the China Petroleum and Chemical Industry Federation in Lanzhou New Area. This project was developed by the Dalian Institute of Chemical Physics, Chinese Academy of Sciences; constructed and operated by Lanzhou New Area Petrochemical Industry Investment Group Co., Ltd.; and designed by Hualu Engineering Technology Co., Ltd. The experts of the appraisal committee unanimously agreed that the liquid solar fuel synthesis demonstration project has integrated and innovated the entire process equipment for liquid solar fuel synthesis; it possesses complete independent intellectual property rights, and its overall technology is at the international leading level. They approved the appraisal. “The “Liquid Solar Fuel Synthesis Demonstration Project” is a thousand-ton-scale demonstration project proposed by Academician Li Can of the Dalian Institute of Chemical Physics, based on the current situation of energy and the ecological environment in China, to be piloted first in the western region. Our country has great potential for renewable energy, but the task of reducing carbon dioxide emissions is arduous. How to use renewable energy to replace fossil fuels, ensure the supply of liquid fuels, and achieve a low-carbon economy has become an important issue related to China’s energy security and sustainable economic development. The synthesis of liquid solar fuel offers a new pathway for producing green liquid fuel, methanol, from renewable energy sources. It utilizes electricity generated from renewable sources such as solar energy to electrolyze water in order to produce \"green\" hydrogen, and it also converts carbon dioxide into liquid fuels such as \"green\" methanol; this substance is aptly referred to as \"liquid sunlight\". It is not only a fundamental solution to carbon dioxide emissions, but also a new energy storage technology for collecting and storing renewable energies such as intermittent solar energy. It represents a process that emulates \"natural photosynthesis\" in order to achieve artificial photosynthesis for the production of green energy. This project is based on two key innovative technologies developed by Li Can’s team: one is an efficient, low-cost, and long-lasting large-scale electrocatalytic water splitting technology for hydrogen production. Achieving large-scale hydrogen production of over 1,000 cubic meters per hour using a single electrolyzer, with the energy consumption per unit of hydrogen reduced to below 4.3 kWh per cubic meter of hydrogen, represents the highest efficiency for large-scale alkaline water electrolysis for hydrogen production worldwide at present. The second is the catalytic technology for the hydrogenation of carbon dioxide to methanol, which is cheap, highly selective, and highly stable. The developed solid-solution bimetallic oxide catalyst enabled the production of green methanol on an industrial scale at a rate of thousands of tons per year; the methanol selectivity reached 98% and the purity of methanol was 99.5%. The catalyst exhibited resistance to poisoning and sintering, showing no significant degradation even after 1,000 hours of operation. The project consists of three basic technical units: solar photovoltaic power generation, water electrolysis for hydrogen production, and the hydrogenation of carbon dioxide to produce methanol. It is accompanied by a photovoltaic power plant with a total capacity of 10 megawatts, which supplies electricity to the equipment used for water electrolysis to produce hydrogen. The project covers a total area of approximately 289 mu, with a total investment of around 140 million yuan. Of this, the photovoltaic section occupies 259 mu and requires an investment of 50 million yuan. This project holds great strategic significance for the development of renewable energy in our country, for addressing issues related to energy security, and even for improving the global ecological balance: by converting electrical energy into chemical energy that can be stored and transported, it provides a new way to utilize solar energy beyond high-voltage power transmission, offering new strategies to overcome the intermittency problems associated with renewable energy as well as the issue of discarding excess solar, wind, or hydroelectric energy. By transforming carbon dioxide into a useful carbon resource, it also helps to solve the safety challenges related to the storage and transportation of hydrogen, thereby providing innovative technical approaches for achieving a low-carbon or even zero-carbon, clean energy future. As the costs of generating electricity from renewable sources and of producing hydrogen through water electrolysis continue to decline, the production costs of green hydrogen and solar fuel will drop significantly. Large-scale carbon capture (CCS) and carbon utilization (CCSU) will further facilitate the broader adoption of renewable energy. It is expected to fundamentally improve China’s ecological environment and help address global carbon emissions and climate change issues.