Abstract
The production of hydrogen from liquid organic hydrogen carrier molecules stands up as a promising option over the conventional hydrogen storage methods. In this study, we explore the potential of formic acid as a convenient hydrogen carrier. For that, soft-biomass-derived carbon-supported Pd catalysts were synthesized by a H3PO4-assisted hydrothermal carbonization method. To assess the impact of the properties of the support in the catalytic performance towards the dehydrogenation of formic acid, three different strategies were employed: (i) incorporation of nitrogen functional groups; (ii) modification of the surface chemistry by performing a thermal treatment at high temperatures (i.e., 900 °C); and (iii) combination on both thermal treatment and nitrogen functionalization. It was observed that the modification of the carbon support with these strategies resulted in catalysts with enhanced performance and outstanding stability even after six consecutive reaction cycles, thus highlighting the important effect of tailoring the properties of the support.
Highlights
Worldwide energy demand is continuously increasing due to the growth in world population, the economic and industrial growth of developing countries, as well as the living standards adopted by the developed countries
A hysteresis loop can be seen, which is related to the presence of mesopores, indicating that these isotherms correspond to a combination of type I and IV isotherms, according to the IUPAC classification [36]
Regarding the pore size distributions (PSDs), the profiles display a bimodal distribution with a first peak at around 0.8 nm and a region of pore sizes higher than 2 nm, arising from the presence of mesopores
Summary
Worldwide energy demand is continuously increasing due to the growth in world population, the economic and industrial growth of developing countries, as well as the living standards adopted by the developed countries. All this is negatively affecting the environmental problems that jeopardize the health of our planet and the life of humankind as we know it now. All this is negatively affecting the environmental problems that jeopardize the health of our planet and the life of humankind as we know it Concern about these issues has brought the search for alternative energy sources to the forefront of research. Formic acid (FA, HCOOH), classified as a liquid organic hydrogen carrier (LOHC), has received great attention during the last decade [5,6,7,8,9,10,11]
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