Congrats to Devashish for his recently published paper showing that photoelectrochemical (PEC) separations can be effective even with low-efficiency solar materials, expanding the design space beyond classical applications.
This work, published in Nature Communications, presents a thermodynamic model rooted in first principles and corrected for losses in real systems to provide greater fundamental understanding by connecting initial concentrations, process conditions, goals, and scales, with PEC energy and efficiency requirements. The findings show that PEC separations have distinct thermodynamic constraints and design rules in comparison with traditional reaction-based PEC applications, and can leverage a broader viable parameter space. These insights position separations as a particularly promising avenue for advancing PEC technologies toward scalable, real-world impact.