For fuel cell technology to become commercially viable, advances in the area of hydrogen production are necessary and it has been proposed that a methanol economy would have several advantages (Olah; Angew. Chem. Int. Ed. 2005 44, 2636 -2639). With this in mind, the reaction of methanol over both nanostructured MgO(111) and NiO(111) has been studied. Rocksalt-structured (111) metal oxides are promising as catalysts because they possess surfaces composed solely of different oxygen species. In-situ DRIFTS was used to study the exposure of conventional (100) and novel (111) metal oxides to methanol vapor. Neither dissociative adsorption nor oxidation of methanol occurred on the conventional metal oxide(100) surface. However, with (111) oxides, DRIFTS spectra first show peaks associated with a formate intermediate, then soon show stretching modes from CO2. From the in-situ studies, a mechanism for the low temperature decomposition of methanol to hydrogen gas and carbon dioxide has been deduced.

Nanostructured metal oxides possessing the (111) facet for methanol decomposition to hydrogen and carbon dioxide

239th National Meeting (2010)

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