Solar Hydrogen Generation from Seawater and Glycerol Water using Photocatalyst Cu/TiO2

Presently, hydrogen gas is produced by nuclear energy, combustion of fossil fuel and
biomass. There is another technology available for hydrogen named as photocatalytic
process. Photocatalytic technology has grand potential for low-cost, environmentally
friendly solar hydrogen production to support the future hydrogen economy. The
difficulties faced by the photocatalytic process are the rapid recombination of photogenerated
electron/hole pairs as well as backward reaction, reverse reaction of hydrogen
and oxygen to water. Electron/hole pairs are recombined with very quickly and release
energy in the form of unproductive heat or photons. Besides that, backward reaction
takes place because it is thermodynamically favourable. The objectives of this project is
to develop Cu/TiO2 photocatalyst to produce hydrogen from water under visible light by
addition of various concentration of glycerol and to enhance the activity of the
photocatalyst by adding glycerol as sacrificed agent. Cu/TiO2 is prepared using complex
precipitation method and tested its efficiency for hydrogen production under visible
light. The performance of Cu/TiO2 in photocatalytic reaction was tested by measuring
hydrogen production rates. Multiport photoreactor is used to investigate the reaction
between photocatalysts with mixture of water/ glycerol, seawater, distilled water and
rain water toward hydrogen generation. The gas produced is collected in a vertical glass
tube over a period of 2 hour by water displacement and the data was recorded for every
10 minutes.The physical and chemical properties of the modified photocatalysts were
investigated using TGA, FTIR, FESEM, DR-UV-Vis, BET surface area analysis, TPR,
and XRD. Based on the result, photocatalyst of 10wt% 4G:Cu (mole ratio
glycerol:copper = 4:1) calcined at180 for 30 min produced higher volume of hydrogen
production with the medium of distilled water, water/glycerol. Besides that,
water/glycerol medium produced a higher production of hydrogen for every
photocatalysts compare to distilled water and rain water.The reduction of band gap
energy enhance the absorption properties of photocatalystand able to produce higher hydrogen gas