Photoreforming of Glucose over CuO/TiO2

Elnaz Bahadori,Ilenia Rossetti,Gianguido Ramis,Danny Zanardo,Michela Signoretto,Alessandro Di Michele,Delia Gazzoli,Federica Menegazzo,Daniela Pietrogiacomi

doi:10.3390/catal10050477

Abstract

Hydrogen production has been investigated through the photoreforming of glucose, as model molecule representative for biomass hydrolysis. Different copper- or nickel-loaded titania photocatalysts have been compared. The samples were prepared starting from three titania samples, prepared by precipitation and characterized by pure Anatase with high surface area, or prepared through flame synthesis, i.e., flame pyrolysis and the commercial P25, leading to mixed Rutile and Anatase phases with lower surface area. The metal was added in different loading up to 1 wt % following three procedures that induced different dispersion and reducibility to the catalyst. The highest activity among the bare semiconductors was exhibited by the commercial P25 titania, while the addition of 1 wt % CuO through precipitation with complexes led to the best hydrogen productivity, i.e., 9.7 mol H2/h kgcat. Finally, a basic economic analysis considering only the costs of the catalyst and testing was performed, suggesting CuO promoted samples as promising and almost feasible for this application.

Highlights

Photoreforming (PR) is the application of photocatalysis for hydrogen production from organic substrates, such as methanol, ethanol, glycerol, sucrose, glucose, starch and wood [1,2,3,4]
This is the region of OH stretching, so a possible interpretation could be. These results suggest that the high dispersion [47] achieved by the Precipitation with organic complexes (PC) method and the role played by the organic ligands in promoting the formation of “narrow-sized” materials [20] have a beneficial effect on H2 production
FSP samples were obtained by means of lab-developed device [56,57], composed of a burner which feeds simultaneously the solution of the titania precursor

Summary

Introduction

Photoreforming (PR) is the application of photocatalysis for hydrogen production from organic substrates, such as methanol, ethanol, glycerol, sucrose, glucose, starch and wood [1,2,3,4]. The first study in this field dates back to 1980 [1] as an interesting possibility to use biomass-derived substrates, and was later better proposed for application to waste raw materials, such as sewage from the food, wine or paper industry [5,6]. In this way, a zero-cost disposal of wastes is achieved, coupled with the production of a highly valued fuel: PR is a fully sustainable method, fitting the concept of circular economy. This avoids the need of gas products separation, CO2 being inert with respect to H2 , and simpler reactors can be designed, such as a one-compartment cell.

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