IL-05

Proceeding of International Symposium on Advanced Materials for Energy/Environment

Electrocatalytic and Photocatalytic Conversion Technologies

for the Production of Renewable Fuels and Chemicals

Hyung Ju Kim1,2* and George W. Huber2

1
Center for Carbon Resources Conversion, Korea Research Institute of Chemical Technology,
141 Gajeong-ro, Yuseong-gu, Daejeon 305-600 (Republic of Korea)
2
Department of Chemical and Biological Engineering, University of Wisconsin-Madison,
1415 Engineering Drive, Madison, WI 53706 (USA)
Email: hjkim@krict.re.kr

Abstract

Polymer electrolyte membrane (PEM) fuel cells have been developed in the last 20 years to be
highly efficient methods to produce electricity from oxygenated compounded. Recently, the PEM
technology has been used to produce a wide range of products from the electrocatalytic oxidation and
reduction of biomass-derived molecules. The electrocatalytic oxidation of biomass-derived
oxygenates has several key advantages over other methods of biomass conversion. The most
significant advantage is that no oxygen gas is required for the reactions. Another advantage is that all
the reactions in the PEM technology take place in one simple reactor that could easily be scaled up to
a commercial level. The simplicity of the reactor design would also decrease the operating costs.
Finally, one of the most important advantages of electrocatalysis compared to conventional catalysis
is the ability to manipulate the size of the activation barrier, and thus reaction selectivity, by
controlling the electrode potential. Therefore, reactions that require high temperatures and pressures
in a conventional catalytic system will readily occur at atmospheric temperatures and pressures in the
electrocatalytic PEM reactor due to the application of a voltage. In this presentation, it will be
demonstrated how PEM technology can be used to produce different fuels and chemicals from
biomass-derived oxygenates.

The direct conversion of solar to chemical energy using photocatalysts in an economical way
would allow society to reduce its dependence on fossil based fuels and move towards a more
sustainable economy. One option that has been studied for the past 40 years is the photocatalytic
water splitting through use of a semiconducting oxide, such as TiO 2, and UV light. However, these
semiconductor catalysts only capture a small portion of the solar energy spectrum (~ 4%) thereby
limiting the practicality of this approach. An alternative approach for solar-to-chemical energy
involves plasmonic catalysts. Certain metal nanoparticles are able to absorb visible light through
phenomena called surface plasmon resonance (SPR). The SPR frequency depends on the metals size,
shape, and environment. Several recent papers have recently demonstrated that surface plasmons can
catalyze a wide variety of chemical reactions, including: hydrogen dissociation, ethylene epoxidation,
CO oxidation, and water splitting. While several studies have shown that surface plasmons can
change the reactivity of a catalytic material, no unified systematic study has elucidated the
fundamental principles of how plasmonic catalysts influence the reactivity of catalytic reactions. As
the second part of this presentation, it will be demonstrated how particle size of plasmonic metal can
systematically affect the photocatalytic activity for water splitting reaction.

[References]
1. H. J. Kim et al, "Selective Glycerol Oxidation by Electrocatalytic Dehydrogenation",
ChemSusChem 7 (2014) 1051-1056.
2. H. J. Kim et al, “Plasmon-Enhanced Photoelectrochemical Water Splitting with Size-Controllable
Gold Nanodot Arrays”, ACS Nano 8 (2014) 10756-10765.

Aug. 27, 2015, Center for Futuristic Chemical Materials (BK21 Plus)/Green-Nano Materials Research Center,

Department of Chemistry, Kyungpook National University, KOREA