Journal
ACS SUSTAINABLE CHEMISTRY & ENGINEERING
Volume 9, Issue 50, Pages 17085-17095Publisher
AMER CHEMICAL SOC
DOI: 10.1021/acssuschemeng.1c06170
Keywords
lignin microsphere; hydrothermal fabrication; surfactant; green reduction; Pd nanoparticles
Categories
Funding
- Natural Science Foundation of China [32071721]
- Young Elite Scientists Sponsorship Program by Tianjin [TJSQNTJ-2020-05]
- Research and Development Plan of Key Areas in Hunan Province [2019NK2032]
- Subproject of National Key RD Plan
- Study on the standard of soil environmental quality assessment and classification in agricultural products producing area [2018YFF0213402]
- Major Science and Technology Innovation Project of Shandong Province [2018CXGC0220]
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This study presents a novel method for the fabrication of lignin microspheres (LMS) using a surfactant-assisted hydrothermal strategy, which were applied as a green reducing agent and carrier for Pd nanoparticles synthesis for hydrogen evolution. The addition of surfactant improved the size uniformity and spherical morphology of LMS, leading to enhanced catalytic activity of Pd nanoparticles.
The development and application of lignin materials with regular nano/microstructures have attracted great interest, as they offer emerging valorization of this currently underused biopolymer. In this work, we propose a novel surfactant-assisted hydrothermal strategy for fabrication of a lignin microsphere (LMS), avoiding the usage of high quantities of costly and environmentally problematic organic solvents in conventional methods. The as-prepared LMS was then applied as a green reducer and carrier for the synthesis of Pd nanoparticles (NPs) that were employed to catalyze hydrogen evolution from formic acid. Under hydrothermal treatment at 180 degrees C, LMS was formed from irregular bulk lignin particles in only 20 min. However, some irregular particles with large sizes (over 600 nm) were observed even under optimized hydrothermal conditions. Therefore, surfactant poly-(vinylpyrrolidone) (PVP) was added to improve the size uniformity and spherical morphology of the LMS, thus obtaining LMS with narrow size distribution (100-500 nm) and a regular spherical morphology. Interestingly, the addition of PVP further promoted the dispersion of Pd NPs on LMS and decreased the Pd NP size. Hence, Pd@LMS-P (PVP added) presented substantially improved activity than Pd@LMS-0 (PVP free), and both catalysts exhibited significantly enhanced activity compared with bare Pd NPs. Consequently, this work demonstrates that the proposed surfactant-assisted hydrothermal method is feasible to prepare well-defined LMS and further contributes to the green formation of Pd NPs with reduced particle size and improved catalytic activity.
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