Martin Grasemann

Formic acid as a hydrogen source – recent developments and future trends

Formic acid has recently been suggested as a promising hydrogen storage material. The basic concept is briefly discussed and the recent advances in the development of formic acid dehydrogenation catalysts are shown. Both the state of research for heterogeneous and for homogeneous catalyst systems are reviewed in detail and an outlook on necessary development steps is presented. Formic acid is considered as one of the most promising materials for hydrogen storage today. There are a number of highly active and robust homogeneous catalysts that selectively decompose formic acid to H2 and CO2 near to room temperature. Although the activity and selectivity of heterogeneous catalysts have not yet reached the level of homogeneous systems, this gap is closing.

Hydrogen storage: beyond conventional methods.

The efficient storage of hydrogen is one of three major hurdles towards a potential hydrogen economy. This report begins with conventional storage methods for hydrogen and broadly covers new technology, ranging from physical media involving solid adsorbents, to chemical materials including metal hydrides, ammonia borane and liquid precursors such as alcohols and formic acid.

Perspective for Extended Group-Contribution Methods for the Prediction of Activity Coefficients Accounting for Sterical Effects. Linking UNIFAC and the Group Vector Space Method

Group contribution methods for the calculation of an activity coefficient such as UNIFAC (universal factorial activity coefficient) currently do not take into account sterical effects. Consequently one of the major deficiencies of such methods is their inability to resolve isomeric systems and their often insufficient accuracy for systems including molecules of very different size. In this paper an approach is presented by which sterical information can be implemented into those methods by means of a modified group vector space (GVS) procedure. (Wen, X.; Qiang, Y. Group Vector Space method for estimating melting and boiling points of organic compounds. Ind. Eng. Chem. Res. 2002,41, 5534-5537.) Exemplary calculations with UNIFAC/GVS underline the potential of this new approach resulting in a perspective for substantially improved group contributions methods with a wider range of applicability and even more reliable predictive performance.