Morphology-Dependent Dye-Removal Mechanism as Observed for Anatase-Titania Photocatalyst

Steam Reforming of Methanol over Nanostructured Pt/TiO2 and Pt/CeO2 Catalysts for Fuel Cell Applications

A research and technological challenge for fuel processors integrated with High Temperature Polymer Electrolyte Membrane Fuel Cells (HT-PEMFCs), also known as Internal Reforming Methanol Fuel Cells (IRMFCs), operating at 200–220 °C, is the development of highly efficient catalysts, which will be able to selectively (low CO and other by-products formation) produce the required quantity of hydrogen at these temperatures. In this work, various amounts of platinum were dispersed via deposition-precipitation (DP) and impregnation (I) methods onto the surface of hydrothermally prepared ceria nanorods (CNRs) and titania nanotubes (TNTs). These nanostructured catalysts were evaluated in steam reforming of methanol process targeting the operation level of IRMFCs. The (DP) method resulted in highly (atomically) dispersed platinum-based catalysts, as confirmed with Scanning Transmission Electron Microscopy (STEM) analysis, with a mean particle size of less than 1 nm in the case of 0.35 wt.% Pt/CNRs catalyst. Ultra-fine dispersion of platinum species correlated with the presence of oxygen vacancies, together with the enrichment of CNRs surface with active metallic phase resulted in a highly active catalyst achieving at 220 °C a hydrogen production rate of 5500 cm3 min−1 per g of loaded platinum.

Significantly enhanced dye removal performance of hollow tin oxide nanoparticles via carbon coating in dark environment and study of its mechanism

Understanding the correlation between physicochemical properties and morphology of nanostructures is a prerequisite for widespread applications of nanomaterials in environmental application areas. Herein, we illustrated that the uniform-sized SnO2@C hollow nanoparticles were large-scale synthesized by a facile hydrothermal method. The size of the core-shell hollow nanoparticles was about 56 nm, and the shell was composed of a solid carbon layer with a thickness of 2 ~ 3 nm. The resulting products were characterized in terms of morphology, composition, and surface property by various analytical techniques. Moreover, the SnO2@C hollow nanoparticles are shown to be effective adsorbents for removing four different dyes from aqueous solutions, which is superior to the pure hollow SnO2 nanoparticles and commercial SnO2. The enhanced mechanism has also been discussed, which can be attributed to the high specific surface areas after carbon coating.