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Kelly Tran

Research

Over the years, hydrogen gas has proven to be an efficient and sustainable energy source. In order to establish a working hydrogen economy, significant technological improvements have to be made, especially regarding the hydrogen storage and transport. In this context, liquid organic hydrogen carriers (LOHCs) have gained a lot of interest, especially benzyltoluene. These organic liquids can be loaded with hydrogen in catalytic hydrogenation processes which facilitates the storage and handling of hydrogen gas. If required, hydrogen can be released in catalytic dehydrogenation processes to be used as an energy source which leads to the recovery of the LOHC.

However, the dehydrogenation process is an endothermic process. To avoid using a part of the hydrogen as an energy source for the dehydrogenation, a currently discussed topic is the partial oxidation of benzyltoluene. The oxidation process releases energy which could potentially compensate the energy requirements for the dehydrogenation. The focus of my work is to find a suitable catalytic system and investigate the reaction conditions to efficiently enable the partial oxidation of benzyltoluene.