Kato Ryo, Yoshimasa Keisuke, Egashira Tatsuya, Oya Takahiro, Oyaizu Kenichi, Nishide Hiroyuki
Department of Applied Chemistry, Waseda University, 3-4-1 Okubo, Shinjuku, Tokyo 169-8555, Japan.
Nat Commun. 2016 Sep 30;7:13032. doi: 10.1038/ncomms13032.
Finding a safe and efficient carrier of hydrogen is a major challenge. Recently, hydrogenated organic compounds have been studied as hydrogen storage materials because of their ability to stably and reversibly store hydrogen by forming chemical bonds; however, these compounds often suffer from safety issues and are usually hydrogenated with hydrogen at high pressure and/or temperature. Here we present a ketone (fluorenone) polymer that can be moulded as a plastic sheet and fixes hydrogen via a simple electrolytic hydrogenation at -1.5 V (versus Ag/AgCl) in water at room temperature. The hydrogenated alcohol derivative (the fluorenol polymer) reversibly releases hydrogen by heating (80 °C) in the presence of an aqueous iridium catalyst. Both the use of a ketone polymer and the efficient hydrogen fixing with water as a proton source are completely different from other (de)hydrogenated compounds and hydrogenation processes. The easy handling and mouldable polymers could suggest a pocketable hydrogen carrier.
