Hydrogen Production through Glycerol Photoreforming on TiO2/Mesoporous Carbon: Influence of the Synthetic Method.

Juan Carlos Escamilla,Jesús Hidalgo-Carrillo,Vicente Montes,Alberto Marinas,Francisco J Urbano,Rafael C Estévez-Toledano,Daniel Cosano,Juan Martín-Gómez

doi:10.3390/ma13173800

Juan Carlos Escamilla, Jesús Hidalgo-Carrillo + Show 6 more

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https://doi.org/10.3390/ma13173800

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Journal: Materials	Publication Date: Aug 28, 2020
Citations: 8	License type: CC BY 4.0

Affiliation: University of Córdoba, University of Extremadura

Abstract

This article explores the effect of the synthetic method of titanium dioxide (TiO2)/C composites (physical mixture and the water-assisted/unassisted sol-gel method) on their photocatalytic activity for hydrogen production through glycerol photoreforming. The article demonstrates that, apart from a high surface area of carbon and the previous activation of its surface to favor titania incorporation, the appropriate control of titania formation is crucial. In this sense, even though the amount of incorporated titania was limited by the saturation of carbon surface groups (in our case, ca. 10 wt.% TiO2), the sol-gel process without water addition seemed to be the best method, ensuring the formation of small homogeneously-distributed anatase crystals on mesoporous carbon. In this way, a ca. 110-fold increase in catalyst activity compared to Evonik P25 (expressed as hydrogen micromole per grams of titania) was achieved.

Highlights

The use of fossil fuels as the main source of energy since the Industrial Revolution has led to a progressive increase in CO2 emissions, largely responsible for global warming and the greenhouse effect
The results indicate that non-functionalized mesoporous carbon (MC) has a point of zero charge (PZC) value close to neutrality, while the values obtained for MC-H decrease in parallel with the pH at which the functionalized solids are washed
Titania was incorporated as a physical mixture

Summary

Introduction

The use of fossil fuels as the main source of energy since the Industrial Revolution has led to a progressive increase in CO2 emissions, largely responsible for global warming and the greenhouse effect. There is a need for a transition from a fossil fuel-based economy to one based on renewables, which would allow us to limit global warming to well below 2 ◦ C, in line with the Paris Agreement on climate change [1,4]. In order to obtain green hydrogen, it should be produced from non-fossil fuels, with biomass representing an interesting option. In this sense, the photocatalytic reforming of oxygenated organic compounds has been presented as an attractive alternative for biohydrogen production [7,8,9]

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