Highly efficient releasing of hydrogen from aqueous-phase reforming of methanol over Cu-SP/Al2O3–ZnO catalyst by carbon layer encapsulated hierarchical porous microsphere strategy

Highly efficient releasing of hydrogen by aqueous-phase reforming of methanol (APRM) is of great significance to promote the development of stationary and mobile H2 power supply for polymer electrolyte membrane fuel cells (PEMFCs). However, highly active catalysts with excellent performance of in situ releasing H2 from APRM still face challenges. Herein, we report a Cu-SP/Al2O3–ZnO (Cu-SP/AZ) catalyst prepared by carbon layer encapsulated hierarchical porous microsphere strategy, which enhanced Cu dispersion (52.8 wt% loading, ∼5 nm particle size) on Al2O3–ZnO (AZ) microsphere. The proposed catalyst exhibited high H2 production rate (base-free) of 64.23 μmolH2/gcat/s at 210 °C, which was nearly the same as that of 20% Pt/C catalyst (63.86 μmolH2/gcat/s) and 2.6-fold higher than that of commercial CuO/ZnO/Al2O3 catalyst (24.62 μmolH2/gcat/s). The characterization results demonstrated that its high activity in APRM could be ascribed to the strategy of carbon layer encapsulated hierarchical porous microsphere as well as coordination of hydroxyl functional group of SP with Cu2+.