H₂ fuels from photocatalytic splitting of seawater affected by nano-TiO₂ promoted with CuO and NiO

To enhance H₂ yields from the photocatalytic splitting of seawater, better photocatalysts such as nanostructured TiO₂ promoted with NiO (2.5%) and CuO (2.5%) have been studied in the present work. The accumulated H₂ yielded from the photocatalytic splitting of seawater containing oxalic acid (50 mM) as the sacrificial reagents on CuO/nano-TiO ₂ is 8.53 mol/g_cat after the 5 h radiation. On the NiO/nano-TiO₂ photocatalyst, the H₂ yield is relatively low (i.e., 1.46 mol/g_cat). Note that the hole scavenging with chlorides in seawater may be associated with the less H₂ yielded from the seawater photocatalysis (on CuO/nano-TiO₂) if compared with that from water (42.4 mol/g_cat).