Catalytic Conversion of CO2 and industrial waste streams to produce hydrogen

"Climate change has driven the need to address three challenges related to global sustainable development: the push for decarbonised energy sources that minimise climate change, such as hydrogen (challenge 1); the efficient use of natural resources (challenge 2); and the development of large-scale negative greenhouse gas emission technologies based on carbon capture, storage and/or conversion to counteract the effects caused by greenhouse gas emissions (challenge 3).
This project addresses these three challenges simultaneously as it proposes the application of inexpensive catalysts to transform glycerol and carbon dioxide captured from air to produce hydrogen via dry reforming. Glycerol dry reforming has not been as extensively studied as methane dry reforming, but offers a sustainable pathway to hydrogen production, as it utilises glycerol, which is a low-value by-product from biodiesel production. The project objectives are: 1. Synthesis and characterisation of novel, affordable, sustainable, non-toxic and robust solid catalysts for glycerol dry reforming. 2. Correlation of the catalyst properties to rate of production and catalyst lifetime. 3. Evaluation of the reaction mechanism, and optimisation of the catalyst properties and operating conditions to maximise yield and process sustainability.
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