4. Engineering challenges in designing efficient industrial processes

This section deals with the design of high-performance photoreactive processes for solar hydrogen production, and thus with the engineering challenge. The aim here is to propose theoretical and generic tools (for any technology) enabling us to understand and analyze experimentally observed behaviors, as well as, ultimately, to design and optimize extrapolable technologies with high kinetic and energy efficiency, compatible with industrialization. Like all photoreactive processes, these technologies are limited and controlled by radiation transfer, making their performance extremely dependent on geometry and boundary conditions such as incident photon flux density. Their design, extrapolation and optimization therefore require investment in multi-scale knowledge models (those where radiation transfer controls final performance, including the small scales of nano-structuring of photocatalytic...