The Adsorption Behavior of Copper Clusters on SiO2 and TiO2 Surfaces: A Computational Study

Depletion of petroleum based fossils fuels provoked the pursuit for generating alternative safe and environmentally clean fuels over the past decade. Hydrogen gas (H2) has long been regarded as a promising alternative to fossil fuels. For instance, fuel cells polymer electrolyte membrane fuel cells (PEMFC) are one of the primary sources as high efficiency energy converting devices. In such processes, producing safe storage of explosive hydrogen gas and circumventing the opportunities of leakage remains a challenging task. Compared to gaseous hydrogen gas storage, on-board hydrogen production by reforming liquid hydrogen carriers will be more promising for future commercialization. Steam reforming of alcoholic sources such as methanol, ethanol or glycerol have been investigated comprehensively for their potential to be converted to hydrogen. Methanol steam reforming (MSR) is considered one of the most favorable chemical processes for on-the-fly hydrogen production for several reasons [2,3]. (i) Methanol is in liquid-state at ambient condition; (ii) it has high H-to-C atom ratio; (iii) requirement of relatively low temperatures (200-400 °C) for activation of methanol and (iv) methanol is sulfur-free and can be easily produced from biomass. Various catalysts have been developed for MSR reactions.