Recent Advances in Biomass-Based Photocatalytic H₂ Production and Efficient Photocatalysts: A Review

Abstract

Biomass as a widely distributed and renewable carbon source plays a unique role in solving the increasing greenhouse gas emission problem and the rapid consumption of nonrenewable fossil fuels. The photocatalytic technique is another attractive approach to address the above issues due to the direct utilization of solar power as the energy source. The combination of biomass and photocatalytic technologies provides a novel alternative concerning environmental and renewable energy issues. Recently, fast-growing interests have been focused on this subject, and milestones have been achieved. Hence, this review provides a comprehensive overview of the recent progress in this newly emerged field. This review mainly focuses on photocatalyst preparation and photocatalytic hydrogen production by using renewable biomass, biomass derivatives, and biowaste as a resource. We expect that this review will inspire readers to develop further applications of biomass and biowaste in photocatalysis for energy and environmental issues.

Photoredox Cascade Catalyst for Efficient Hydrogen Production with Biomass Photoreforming

“…Although extensive efforts have been devoted to the application of the Honda–Fujishima effect, [3] the solar‐to‐hydrogen conversion efficiency is still low because of the slow four‐electron transfer kinetics of water oxidation [4–9] . An alternative and promising approach to sustainably produce H 2 is the photoreforming of readily available biomass [10–13] . Because this reaction provides not only H 2 but also value‐added chemicals from biomass oxidation, various semiconductor photocatalysts ranging from simple TiO 2 to carbon‐based quantum dots have been studied [14–17] .…”

“…[4][5][6][7][8][9] An alternative and promising approach to sustainably produce H 2 is the photoreforming of readily available biomass. [10][11][12][13] Because this reaction provides not only H 2 but also value-added chemicals from biomass oxidation, various semiconductor photocatalysts ranging from simple TiO 2 to carbon-based quantum dots have been studied. [14][15][16][17] Unfortunately, the activity is not sufficient, especially for water-insoluble polymeric substrates like cellulose, owing to the poor contact and limited electron transfer between a heterogeneous photocatalyst and biomass substrate.…”

Flammability Limits: A Comprehensive Review of Theory, Experiments, and Estimation Methods

“…However, production methods 334 and storage strategies 335 are still under investigation. Hydrogen can be produced from natural gas 336 and biomass, 337 among others. Other important renewable and alternative fuels include ammonia, ethanol, methanol, syngas, and biogas.…”

Recent advances on catalysts for photocatalytic selective hydrogenation of nitrobenzene to aniline

“…TiO 2 has been extensively studied in the field of photocatalysis due to its following advantages (Daghrir et al, 2013;Zhou et al, 2022): ➀ It is low-cost, safe and non-toxic; ➁ It has good light and chemical stability, and no photocorrosion or chemical corrosion will occur during the photocatalytic reactions; ➂ It has a suitable BG, which allows it to be excited by ultraviolet light; ➃ The photogenerated charges are of strong redox ability, which endows TiO 2 relatively high photocatalytic activity under ultraviolet irradiation (Tamaki et al, 2007;Qiu et al, 2014;Chaturvedi and Singh, 2021). These advantages of TiO 2 make it promising for photocatalytic SHN (Kandiel et al, 2014;Oliveira et al, 2016;Wang et al, 2016).…”