Henrik Junge

Streamlined hydrogen production from biomass

Hydrogen is playing an increasingly larger role in clean energy technologies and the emerging hydrogen economy. However, efficient and selective H2 production from renewable resources is rare so far. Herein, we describe a dehydrogenation route that is applicable to various kinds of non-food-related biomass and daily waste, such as wheat straw, corn straw, rice straw, reed, bagasse, bamboo sawdust, cardboard and newspaper. H2 yields up to 95% were achieved by a one-pot, two-step reaction with a 69u2009ppm molecularly defined iridium catalyst bearing an imidazoline moiety from formic acid, which was in turn obtained via a 1u2009v% dimethyl sulfoxide-promoted hydrolysis–oxidation of biomass. Formation of the unwanted side products CO and CH4 was no more than 22 and 2u2009ppm, respectively, while CO2 was captured as carbonate. The resulting hydrogen gas can be directly applied in proton exchange membrane fuel cells.Access to renewable hydrogen represents an important target for the success of the hydrogen economy. Now, a one-pot method is presented for the conversion of cellulosic biomass into hydrogen via formic acid as the intermediate, followed by its application to a fuel cell.

Publisher Correction: Streamlined hydrogen production from biomass

In the version of this Article originally published, there were several errors in Table 1: in structure 1, the NH group bonded to the Ir should have been a H atom; the NR2 group bonded to the Ir should have been NH; in structures 2, 4 and 5, the OH groups bonded to the Ir atoms should have been OH2 groups; in structure 6 the OH2 group bonded to Ir was erroneously bonded with the below N; and in structure 10, the N=N bond should have been N–N. In structure 12 of Fig. 4, the CH2 between the two oxygen atoms should have been a CH group. Finally, the affiliations within the Supplementary Information were not consistent with those of the main text, a new Supplementary Information file has been uploaded.