Produção fotocatalítica de hidrogênio utilizando catalisadores baseados no dióxido de titânio

Abstract

Recently, great attention has been focused on hydrogen as a clean and renewable potential energy vector. In the present study, a functional system designed for photocatalytic hydrogen evolution from water was developed and analyzed. Essays consisted of cylindrical borosilicate reactor with 750 mL suspension under nitrogen atmosphere, 100 mg L-1 of 0.5% m/m Pt-loaded TiO2 (P25, M02 or M19) using hexachloroplatinic acid as cocatalyst (Pt) precursor and aqueous solution of eléctron donor as sacrificial reagent (methanol, paracetamol or sodium lignosulfonate) at different concentrations. The pH of the suspension was adjusted using NaOH 0.1 mol L-1 or HCl 0.1 mol L-1 solutions previously prepared. The obtained system was maintaned under controlled temperature (20 ºC), stirring and irradiation by the use of 400 W high-pressure mercury lamp (HPL-N). The tests were carried out employing commercial P25 (Degussa-Evonick) to study the stability of the system; role of pH (0.5; 1.8; 2.8; 3.8; 4.8; 6.2; 8.3 e 11.5); influence of methanol concentration (0; 20; 35; 50; 65 e 80% v/v) and the use of alternative sacrificial reagents (paracetamol and sodium lignosulfonate). Lately, essays were conducted employing based-TiO2 catalysts available in LAFOT-CM (M02 e M19) and tests using composites of titanium dioxide associated with zinc phthalocyanine (TiO2/FtZn 2.5% m/m). The results showed that 8 hours of irradiation proved to be enough to evaluate hydrogen evolution satisfactorily; optimum pH lies around point of zero charge (pHpzc) of the employed catalyst, reaching at these conditions 55.36 mmol h-1 g-1; the best methanol concentration studied was 50% v/v achieving 131.41 mmol h-1 g-1 and the use of alternative sacrificial reagents resulted in hydrogen evolution at rate of 9.76 mmol h-1 g-1 with paracetamol, whereas no hydrogen production was detected by the use of sodium lignosulfonate. Among based-TiO2 studied were found the following relationship of hydrogen evolution efficiency: P25 > M19 > M02. The association between zinc phthalocyanine dye and titanium dioxide proved to be favorable to facilitate hydrogen evolution resulting in improvement of 61%, 170% e 34% respectively to P25/ZnPc 2,5% m/m, M02/ZnPc 2,5% m/m e ZnPc/FtZn 2,5% m/m comparared with pure catalyst due to the ZnPc capacity to inject electrons in the conduction band of semiconductors when electronically excited.