Nanocatalizadores para procesos medioambientales: obtención de energía y eliminación de contaminantes

Abstract

In the present doctoral thesis, two main concerns modern society is experiencing have been addressed: on the one hand, the need of developing clean, renewable energy sources that help to reduce the heavy reliance on fossil fuels and, on the other hand, the urgency to unfold greener processes to palliate water pollution. Regarding the first covered issue, several catalysts families based on transition and noble metals have been synthesized, fully characterized and tested in hydrodeoxygenation (HDO) reaction. In order to fully understand the catalytic behaviour of the prepared catalysts, crystalline nature, textural properties, morphology, acidic nature and surface chemical composition of all catalysts (and precursors, when required) were characterized by X-ray powder diffraction (XRD), N2 adsorption-desorption isotherms, transmission electron microscopy (TEM), ammonia thermoprogrammed desorption (NH3-TPD) and X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS). Oher characterization techniques have been performed for some but not all catalysts, such as hydrogen thermoprogrammed reduction (H2-TPR), thermogravimetric analysis (TGA), Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy (FTIR), X-ray fluorescence (XRF) and scanning electron microscopy (SEM).