Ruthenium-Catalyzed Transformation of Ethylene Glycol for Selective Hydrogen Gas Production in Water
Ankit Kumar, Bhanu Priya, Sanjay Kumar Singh
Abstract
We developed an efficient process for producing hydrogen gas from aqueous ethylene glycol (EG) at 90–160 °C over a ruthenium catalyst. We achieved a high yield of hydrogen gas (up to 3.0 n (H 2 )/ n (EG)) and formic acid (85% yield) from ethylene glycol in aqueous alkaline medium at 110 °C, where the role of reaction temperature and base concentration was found to be critical in achieving a high yield of H 2 . The chemical and morphological properties of the synthesized ruthenium catalyst were established using P-XRD, TEM, XPS, and other techniques. Advantageously, the ruthenium catalyst exhibited appreciably high long-term stability for over 70 h, generating ca . 290 L of H 2 per gram of Ru with a yield of 1035 L of H 2 per L of ethylene glycol.