Nanomaterials with oxygen mobility for catalysts of biofuels transformation into syngas, SOFC and oxygen/hydrogen separation membranes: Design and performance

Abstract

Modern hydrogen energy technologies include generation of syngas and pure hydrogen from biofuels to be used for green energy production in solid oxide fuel cells (SOFC). To be economically feasible, these processes require design of stable, efficient and inexpensive catalysts, permselective membranes for hydrogen and oxygen separation as well as SOFC cathode and anode materials. In all cases, such materials should possess a high oxygen mobility. This review presents results of our research devoted to design of materials based on complex oxides with fluorite, perovskite, and spinel structures used in these applications. The key aspect is characterization of their oxygen mobility by unique method of temperature –programmed oxygen heteroexchange in flow reactors and finding its dependence on their composition, real structure/microstructure and surface properties affected by methods of synthesis and elucidated with the help of modern structural, spectroscopic and kinetic methods. Optimized materials were shown to provide stable and efficient performance in catalytic reactors, membranes and solid oxide fuels cells.