Solar-driven organic waste valorisation for hydrogen and value- added chemicals co-production on earth-abundant materials Yi-Hsuan Lai Department of Materials Science and Engineering, National Cheng Kung University, No.1, University Road, Tainan City 701, Taiwan E-mail: yhlai@gs.ncku.edu.tw Solar-driven organic waste valorisation has emerged as a promising technology recently as it enables carbon- neutral cycles by simultaneously generating H 2 fuel and value-added chemicals. However, to meet sustainability, photocatalysts and photoelectrodes for performing solar-driven organic waste should be made of earth-abundant and non-toxic materials. We have reported a heterostructured material composed of only earth-abundant elements can be an effective photocatalyst for photocatalytic H 2 production from plastic valorisation. [1] At the same time, formate is the main oxidising organic product. The heterostructured material is made of g-C 3 N 4 and CuFeO 2 , which can be synthesised using a simple and scalable process.The heterostructured photocatalyst of g-C 3 N 4 /CuFeO 2 shows at least 50 times enhanced activity for H 2 evolution compared to g-C 3 N 4 and CuFeO 2 in hydrolysed polyester microfiber solution. Notably,g-C 3 N 4 /CuFeO 2 still exhibits promising activity in seawater, demonstrating its promising environmental adaptability. We recently developed a nanosheet-structured CuWO 4 (nanoCuWO 4 ) photoanode, and its first investigation in photoelectrochemical (PEC) organic waste valorisation was reported. [2] Taking advantage of the robustness of CuWO 4 , nanoCuWO 4 was investigated for PEC biomass valorisation in a broad range of pH. Three kinds of biomass, glucose, fructose and glycerol, were used to demonstrate the versatility of nanoCuWO 4 . A standalone system of a nanoCuWO 4 -based PEC cell integrated with a photovoltaic cell was further realised for the co- production of H 2 and value-added chemicals. References 1. Chem. Eng. J. , 2023, 475, 146413. 2. Small , 2024, 20, 2404478.
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