Frontier Institute of Science and Technology jointly with College of Science, State Key Laboratory for Mechanical Behavior of Materials, Xi'an Jiaotong University, Xi'an 710049, China.
Department of Nuclear Science and Engineering, and Materials Science and Engineering, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, MA 02139, USA.
Sci Adv. 2016 Sep 2;2(9):e1501425. doi: 10.1126/sciadv.1501425. eCollection 2016 Sep.
Methanol, which contains 12.6 weight percent hydrogen, is a good hydrogen storage medium because it is a liquid at room temperature. However, by releasing the hydrogen, undesirable CO and/or CO byproducts are formed during catalytic fuel reforming. We show that alkaline earth metal oxides, in our case MgO nanocrystals, exhibit stable photocatalytic activity for CO/CO-free H production from liquid methanol at room temperature. The performance of MgO nanocrystals toward methanol dehydrogenation increases with time and approaches ~320 μmol g hour after a 2-day photocatalytic reaction. The CO -free H production is attributed to methanol photodecomposition to formaldehyde, photocatalyzed by surface electronic states of unique monodispersed, porous MgO nanocrystals, which were synthesized with a novel facile colloidal chemical strategy. An oxygen plasma treatment allows for the removal of organic surfactants, producing MgO nanocrystals that are well dispersible in methanol.
甲醇含有 12.6%的重量百分比的氢，是一种很好的储氢介质，因为它在室温下是液体。然而，在催化燃料重整过程中，通过释放氢气，会形成不希望的 CO 和/或 CO 副产物。我们表明，碱性土金属氧化物，在我们的情况下是 MgO 纳米晶体，在室温下对从液体甲醇中无 CO/CO 的 H 生产表现出稳定的光催化活性。MgO 纳米晶体对甲醇脱氢的性能随着时间的推移而增加，在 2 天的光催化反应后接近 320 μmol g hour。无 CO 的 H 生产归因于甲醇光解为甲醛，这是由独特的单分散、多孔 MgO 纳米晶体的表面电子态光催化作用引起的，这些纳米晶体是通过一种新的简便胶体化学策略合成的。氧等离子体处理允许去除有机表面活性剂，产生在甲醇中良好分散的 MgO 纳米晶体。
