Solar-Driven Water-Gas Shift Reaction over CuOx/Al2O3 with 1.1% of Light-to-Energy Storage

Hydrogen production from coal gasification provides a cleaning approach to convert coal resource into chemical energy, but the key procedures of coal gasification and thermal catalytic water-gas shift (WGS) reaction in this energy technology still suffer from high energy cost. We herein propose adopting a solar-driven WGS process instead of traditional thermal catalysis, with the aim of greatly decreasing the energy consumption. Under light irradiation, the CuOx/Al2O3 delivers excellent catalytic activity (122 mu molg(cat)(-1)s(-1) of H-2 evolution and >95% of CO conversion) which is even more efficient than noble-metal-based catalysts (Au/Al2O3 and Pt/Al2O3). Importantly, this solar-driven WGS process costs no electric/thermal power but attains 1.1% of light-to-energy storage. The attractive performance of the solar-driven WGS reaction over CuOx/Al2O3 can be attributed to the combined photothermocatalysis and photocatalysis.