Abstract
Light-driven processes can be regarded as a promising technology for chemical production within the bio-refinery concept, due to the very mild operative conditions and high selectivity of some reactions. In this work, we report copper oxide (CuO)-titanium dioxide (TiO2) nanocomposites to be efficient and selective photocatalysts for ethanol photodehydrogenation under gas phase conditions, affording 12-fold activity improvement compared to bare TiO2. In particular, the insertion method of the CuO co-catalyst in different TiO2 materials and its effects on the photocatalytic activity were studied. The most active CuO co-catalyst was observed to be highly dispersed on titania surface, and highly reducible. Moreover, such high dispersion was observed to passivate some surface sites where ethanol is strongly adsorbed, thus improving the activity. This kind of material can be obtained by the proper selection of loading technique for both co-catalysts, allowing a higher coverage of photocatalyst surface (complex-precipitation in the present work), and the choice of titania material itself. Loading copper on a high surface area titania was observed to afford a limited ethanol conversion, due to its intrinsically higher reactivity affording to a strong interaction with the co-catalyst.
Highlights
Nowadays, the requirement of an alternative, non-fossil-based, energy economy is growing in importance, because the widespread uses of these energy sources is known to have a remarkable negative effect on Earth’s climate [1]
Photocatalysis has been claimed to be a promising technology for the direct conversion of sunlight, the most abundant renewable energy source on the Earth [2], into so-called solar fuels [3]
It can be produced by photocatalysis from pure water [5], but in the presence of an organic compound, the H2 yield can be improved [6]
Summary
The requirement of an alternative, non-fossil-based, energy economy is growing in importance, because the widespread uses of these energy sources is known to have a remarkable negative effect on Earth’s climate [1]. Hydrogen has been regarded as a potential substitute for fossil fuels, based on the concept of so-called hydrogen economy [4] It can be produced by photocatalysis from pure water [5], but in the presence of an organic compound, the H2 yield can be improved [6]. The reaction is usually carried out with suspended particles in the liquid phase [10,11,12], but gas-phase systems have recently shown several advantages over liquid-based systems, such as easy catalyst and product recovery, reduced light losses by scattering, and no leaching issues [13] One drawback of this process is the requirement of gaseous or volatile compounds [14,15,16]
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