Research
Efficient H₂ from Formic Acid / Formate
Building a real-time, operando pH-measurement setup to track how the formic acid–to–formate ratio drives catalytic hydrogen output, and using it to find the conditions that maximize H₂ generation.
- Materials
Background
Formic acid and its conjugate base, formate, can both act as hydrogen sources when they’re catalytically decomposed, and mixing the two together turned out to be more interesting than using either alone. The ratio between formic acid and formate in solution sets the pH, and pH in turn strongly influences how active the catalyst is — but pH also drifts as the reaction proceeds and the mixture is consumed, so a single measurement taken before or after the reaction misses most of what’s actually happening.
To see that in real time, I built an operando pH-measurement setup: a probe integrated directly into the reactor so pH could be tracked continuously, live, over the course of the reaction rather than inferred afterward from endpoint samples. That let us map catalytic activity against the acid-to- formate ratio as it actually evolved, rather than against a static starting condition, and use that map to identify the ratio and conditions that maximize hydrogen output.
Most formic-acid dehydrogenation work at the time treated the acid-to-formate ratio as a fixed recipe decision rather than something to actively track and tune. The operando setup was as much a methodology contribution as a materials one — the pH probe turned the ratio into a real, continuously observable experimental variable instead of a static input chosen up front.
Formic acid also shows up as the proton source that drives the acid-mediated NaBH₄ hydrolysis used across the sodium borohydride platform — see Sodium Borohydride for Hydrogen Mobility & Compression.
What I did
- Led the experimental design for the formic acid / formate ratio study.
- Synthesized and characterized the catalyst.
- Built the operando pH-monitoring setup used to track the reaction live, in-reactor.
- Carried out reaction product analysis and wrote the manuscript.
Outcomes
The full study appears as a co-first-authored paper in ACS Sustainable Chemistry & Engineering. It was also recognized with the Best Poster Presentation Award at The Korean Hydrogen and New Energy Society (KHNES) on May 20, 2022, for a poster on the hydrogen production strategy from a mixture of formic acid and formate.
Related publications
Strategy for Efficient H₂ Production from a Mixture of Formic Acid and Formate using Operando pH Measurements
ACS Sustainable Chemistry & Engineering, 2022
Co-first author
Contribution: Conceptualization, experiments, catalyst characterization, reaction product analysis, manuscript writing
“Real-time pH tracking inside the reactor located the acid–formate ratio that maximizes H₂ output.”
doi.org/10.1021/acssuschemeng.1c06603