Effects of Different Sacrificial Agents and Hydrogen Production from Wastewater by Pt-Graphene/TiO₂

The Pt and graphene (GN) were used to modify TiO₂ nanoparticles. GN/TiO₂, Pt-TiO₂, Pt-GN/TiO₂ were successfully synthesized by modified Hummers’ method, alcohol thermal and photodeposition method, respectively. The characterizations of the synthesized catalysts by different characterization techniques, including N₂ adsorption–desorption isotherm, fourier transform infrared spectroscopy (FTIR), inductively coupled plasma (ICP) technique and element analyzer (EA), respectively. In addition, different sacrificial agents (methanol, ethanol, n-propanol, i-propanol, n-butanol, ethylene glycol, 1,2-propanediol, 1,3-propanediol and glycerol) have been investigated. There is clearly a linear relationship between hydrogen production rate and the polarity of monohydric alcohols. According to the Langmuir-Hinshelwood results, the surface pseudo-first order rate constant k = 15.06 mmol h⁻¹ g⁻¹ and the adsorption coefficient k = 0.50 mol L⁻¹ were obtained. The feasibility of hydrogen production from wastewater obtained from terephthalic acid industry was studied. After reusing the catalyst under the same experimental conditions, the hydrogen production rate has only slightly decreased for 3 more cycles, which indicated the stability of the synthesized catalysts.