Engineering of the Cu+/Cu0 interface by chitosan-glucose complex for aqueous phase reforming of methanol into hydrogen

The aqueous-phase reforming of methanol(APRM)via non-precious metal heterogeneous catalysts is highly desirable, but challenging. Herein, we report a highly efficient copper catalyst encapsulated by chitosan-glucose (CS-G) conjugate with high metal loading of 35 wt% for H2 generation from APRM. The optimized Cu@CS19-G1-300 catalyst exhibited exceptional activity of 1.39 × 105 μmolH2/gcat/h at low temperature of 210 °C, which was ∼4.5 times higher than that of commercial CuZrAl catalysts (2.88 × 104 μmolH2gcat−1h−1). The chitosan-glucose conjugate acted not only as the main carbon support for Cu dispersion, but also as adsorbent to stablize as many Cu ions as possible. And meanwhile, with abundant Cu+/Cu0 interface sites due to the reducing effect of glucose, the water gas shift reaction (WGSR) was intensified and thus displayed excellent selectivity toward CO by-product. This specific catalyst construction for H2 production from APRM exhibits great potential of on-site H2 supply for polymer membrane fuel cells.