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Photocatalytic Hydrogen Production via Water Splitting Using Gold-Based Catalysts Under UV/VIS Light

Graduate #68
Discipline: Ecology Environmental and Earth Sciences
Subcategory: Materials Science

Abniel Machín - University of Turabo
Co-Author(s): Francisco Márquez, University of Turabo, Gurabo, Puerto Rico Carmen Morant and Arancha Gómez, Autonomous University of Madrid, Madrid, Spain



In order to avoid serious environmental and economic damages from energy use, humans must stop using fossil fuels altogether, as soon as possible. One possible strategy to cut the dependence of fossil fuels and, at the same time create a new economic force, is to develop a hydrogen based energy economy. A potentially viable way forward is to produce H2 from water by combining solar energy and heterogeneous photocatalysts. For these reasons the objectives of this investigation were: 1) synthesize a high surface area TiO2 nanowires (NWs) catalyst in the rutile phase, 2) incorporate different amount of gold nanoparticles into the as-synthesized catalyst and into the commercial form of TiO2 (P-25) using a chemical reduction method, 3) produce hydrogen via water splitting using visible and ultraviolet light. The hypotheses of the study were: a) The catalyst with the biggest surface are will produce the biggest amount of hydrogen, and b) The gold nanoparticles will enhance the hydrogen production and will allow the use of visible light. Interestingly, the incorporation of gold nanoparticles into the titania surface enhanced the surface area in both P25 and TiO2 NWs. The hydrogen production obtained by using Au/P25 catalysts was measured to be 800 μmolg-1h-1 under irradiation at 400 nm and 1,436 μmolg-1h-1 using Au/TiO2 NWs at the same wavelength. Both of the hypotheses were correct and all the objectives achieved. The characterization of the synthetized compounds were performed with: 1) X-ray diffraction (XRD). 2) Field emission Scanning Electron Microscopy (FESEM). 3) Brunauer, Emmett and Teller (BET) instrument. 4) Gas Chromatographer with a Thermal Conductive detector (GC-TCD) and 5) Ultra Violet Visible spectroscopy (UV-VIS). A future research will be the synthesis and characterization of ZnO, another semiconductor, which too develops the role of photocatalyst. The incorporation of gold as co-catalyzer will be developed to compare the results of hydrogen production of this semiconductor vs TiO2. The characterization and measure of hydrogen production will be performed using the same techniques described for TiO2 research. It is also expected that that the catalyst with the biggest surface area and distribution of gold nanoparticles will produce the biggest amount of hydrogen.

Abniel Machin's Abstract for ERN 2015 Confere.docx

Funder Acknowledgement(s): Financial support from the U.S. Department of Energy, through the Massie Chair Project at Universidad del Turabo, and from the U.S. Department of Defense under Grant W911NF-14-1-0046, are acknowledged. The authors thank “Servicio Interdepartamental de Investigación (SIdI)” from Universidad Autónoma de Madrid for FE-SEM Microscopy.

Faculty Advisor: Francisco Márquez, fmarquez@suagm.edu

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This material is based upon work supported by the National Science Foundation (NSF) under Grant No. DUE-1930047. Any opinions, findings, interpretations, conclusions or recommendations expressed in this material are those of its authors and do not represent the views of the AAAS Board of Directors, the Council of AAAS, AAAS’ membership or the National Science Foundation.

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