Solar Hydrogen Generation from Seawater and Glycerol Water using Photocatalyst Cu/TiO2

• Main Author: Baraniruben , Selvaraj
• Format: Final Year Project
• Published: Universiti Teknologi Petronas 2011
• Subjects: TP Chemical technology
• Online Access: http://utpedia.utp.edu.my/420/
• Institution: Universiti Teknologi Petronas

Presently, hydrogen gas is produced by nuclear energy, combustion of fossil fuel and biomass. There is another technology available for hydrogen named as photocatalytic process. Photocatalytic technology has grand potential for low-cost, environmentally friendly solar hydrogen production to support the future hydrogen economy. The difficulties faced by the photocatalytic process are the rapid recombination of photogenerated electron/hole pairs as well as backward reaction, reverse reaction of hydrogen and oxygen to water. Electron/hole pairs are recombined with very quickly and release energy in the form of unproductive heat or photons. Besides that, backward reaction takes place because it is thermodynamically favourable. The objectives of this project is to develop Cu/TiO2 photocatalyst to produce hydrogen from water under visible light by addition of various concentration of glycerol and to enhance the activity of the photocatalyst by adding glycerol as sacrificed agent. Cu/TiO2 is prepared using complex precipitation method and tested its efficiency for hydrogen production under visible light. The performance of Cu/TiO2 in photocatalytic reaction was tested by measuring hydrogen production rates. Multiport photoreactor is used to investigate the reaction between photocatalysts with mixture of water/ glycerol, seawater, distilled water and rain water toward hydrogen generation. The gas produced is collected in a vertical glass tube over a period of 2 hour by water displacement and the data was recorded for every 10 minutes.The physical and chemical properties of the modified photocatalysts were investigated using TGA, FTIR, FESEM, DR-UV-Vis, BET surface area analysis, TPR, and XRD. Based on the result, photocatalyst of 10wt% 4G:Cu (mole ratio glycerol:copper = 4:1) calcined at180 for 30 min produced higher volume of hydrogen production with the medium of distilled water, water/glycerol. Besides that, water/glycerol medium produced a higher production of hydrogen for every photocatalysts compare to distilled water and rain water.The reduction of band gap energy enhance the absorption properties of photocatalystand able to produce higher hydrogen gas