Reuse of Acid‐treated Waste Corn Straw for Photocatalytic Hydrogen Production

Abstract Using natural biomass as sacrificial agent for photocatalytic hydrogen production is a current topic of interest in the field of new energy research because it has widely available resources, is economical, and has environmental benefits. In this study, we propose a strategy for photocatalytic hydrogen production using acid‐treated corn straw and its extracts as a sacrificial agent. Furthermore, the important factors that affect the photocatalytic performance of hydrogen production are also studied. X‐ray diffraction (XRD), Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy (FT‐IR), thermogravimetric analysis (TGA), and scanning electron microscopy (SEM) are employed to characterize the composition, structure, and morphology of the corn straw. High‐performance liquid chromatography (HPLC) is employed to characterize the composition of extracts in the filtrate obtained from acid treatment. The results from the above analyses show that cellobiose and xylose, which are extracted from corn straw, significantly improve the hydrogen production performance. The optimal hydrogen generation rates in this study reach 30.583 μmol/h in 100 mL of water; this is 72 times greater than that using pure water, 2 times greater than that using raw corn straw, and 4.5 times greater than that using acid‐treated corn straw. Also, from these characterizations and analyses, the possible photocatalytic mechanism of this system is also proposed in this paper.