Chitosan hydrogel anchored phthalocyanine supported metal nanoparticles: Bifunctional catalysts for pollutants reduction and hydrogen production.

Metal nanoparticles possess high catalytic activity in various organic transformation reactions. A catalyst must be recovered and re-used effectively and economically to lower the overall reaction cost. The recovery of a catalyst remains a challenge due to their extreme small size. In this research work, catalytic metal nanoparticles were synthesized on Zn-phthalocyanine (ZnPc) and chitosan hydrogel (CH) composite which acts as catalyst support. The ZnPc-CH support facilitate the easy recovery of the loaded metal nanoparticles. Metal nanoparticles (M0) based on Cu0, Ag0, Ni0, Co0 and Fe0 were decorated inside and on ZnPc-CH hydrogel surface. The developed M0@ZnPc-CH were utilized for the enhanced selective reduction of toxins and hydrogen production by methanolysis and hydrolysis of NaBH4. Effective catalytic reduction and hydrogen generation was successfully achieved with Co0@ZnPc-CH and ZnPc-CH. Under optimized conditions, Co0@ZnPc-CH showed complete reduction of 4-nitrophenol (4-NP) in 8.0 min with the fast 4-NP reduction kinetics (K = 0.611 min-1). Among the developed catalysts, ZnPc-CH showed fast H2 generation with high H2 generation rate (HGR = 4100 mLg-1min-1) under optimized conditions. Metal leaching from Co0@ZnPc-CH was negligible during recycling of the catalyst, suggesting that it could be implemented to 4-NP treatment from real water samples. Similarly, ZnPc-CH could produce same quantity of H2 throughout 4 continuous cycles of durability testing without any deactivation and leaching and ZnPc-CH showed high stability, indicating the effectiveness of the catalyst to be applied for H2 production on large scale.