Sunlight-driven methanol-steam-reforming (MSR) reaction using solar energy promises efficient production and safe transportation of hydrogen energy while storing solar energy. However, the low efficiency of photo-reforming and the high cost of thermo-reforming, intrinsically due to limited usage of full-spectrum solar energy, pose a significant challenge to practical application. Here, we propose a sunlight-driven dual-bed photo-thermo-catalytic reactor (DBPTR) for high-efficient hydrogen production from MSR with the cascaded utilization of photo-thermo-catalysis (PTC) over Pt-CuO catalyst bed and thermo-catalysis (TC) over CuO/ZnO/Al₂O₃ catalyst bed, respectively. The experimental data verify that the overall solar-to-hydrogen (STH) efficiencies of DBPTR remarkably achieve 22.5% in the laboratory and 20.3% outdoors, respectively. These excellent performances are evidently attributed to the fact that our DBPTR could harvest the short-wave radiation (high-energy photons) in the PTC bed for photo-thermo-driven hydrogen production and confine the long-wave radiation (low-energy photons) in the TC bed for thermo-driven hydrogen production. Meanwhile, the proposed DBPTR has been proved to be scaled-up and operate under a reasonably concentrated irradiance of 16 kW m⁻² with the above high STH efficiency, harmonizing the high-performance reactor, low-cost concentrator and moderate-accuracy sun-tracker. This work opens up a novel practical pathway towards high-efficient solar-to-chemical conversion.

利用太阳能的阳光驱动的甲醇蒸汽重整（MSR）反应有望在储存太阳能的同时高效生产和安全运输氢能。然而，本质上由于全光谱太阳能的使用有限，光重整的低效率和热重整的高成本对实际应用提出了重大挑战。在这里，我们提出了一种阳光驱动的双床光热催化反应器（DBPTR），通过在 Pt-CuO 催化剂床和热反应器上级联利用光热催化（PTC），从 MSR 中高效生产氢气。 CuO/ZnO/Al ₂ O ₃催化（TC）分别为催化剂床。实验数据验证DBPTR的整体太阳能制氢（STH）效率在实验室和室外分别达到22.5%和20.3%。这些优异的性能显然归功于我们的 DBPTR 可以在 PTC 床中收集短波辐射（高能光子）用于光热驱动氢气生产并限制长波辐射（低能光子）在 TC 床中用于热驱动氢气生产。同时，所提出的DBPTR已被证明可以按比例放大并在16 kW m ^{-2的合理集中辐照度下运行}具有上述高STH效率，协调高性能反应堆、低成本聚光器和中等精度太阳跟踪器。这项工作为高效太阳能转化为化学物质开辟了一条新的实用途径。