Superior hydrogen production during sodium borohydride methanolysis using monodisperse copper nanoparticles grafted on the peptidoglycan layer of Bacillus atrophaeus bacteria.

Recently, "Bacillus atrophaeus", which has a cell wall structure consisting of peptidoglycan layers, has attracted the attention of researchers due to its different usage areas. In particular, research focuses on the technology of obtaining bio‑hydrogen with various techniques. This research involves, for the first time, the use of the Bacillus atrophaeus bacteria as a bio-supporting material for monodisperse copper nanoparticles (CuNPs@Bacillus atrophaeus) and the manufacture of hydrogen through catalytic NaBH4-methanolysis (SB-methanolysis) in the presence of the resulting nanoparticles. Here, detailed kinetic studies were carried out during the SB-methanolysis by taking CuNPs and bacteria in varying amounts and at varying temperatures, and the activation energy and lifetime of monodisperse CuNPs@Bacillus atrophaeus was found to be 31.76 kJ mol-1 and 30,903 mol H2 (mol Cu)-1, respectively. The chemical and physical structure of the CuNPs@Bacillus atrophaeus was observed during the SB-methanolysis, so only detailed characterization of bacteria and monodisperse CuNPs@Bacillus atrophaeus was performed, and the particle size of the catalyst was calculated as 3.29 nm. The results showed that the monodisperse CuNPs@Bacillus atrophaeus, which has superior features and high catalytic activity, is a "clean", very well methanol-soluble, and quite surprising catalyst in terms of hydrogen production.