Unraveling the Textile Pollution Problem with Li5FeO4 as a Bifunctional Material for Hydrogen Production and CO x Capture: From Glucose to Cotton Pyrolysis

Enhancing biomass pyrolysis to produce hydrogen, via catalysis and carbon oxides sorption, presents a potential energy solution while mitigating CO x emissions. In the present work, Li5FeO4 was tested for the pyrolysis reaction of efficient hydrogen production from different biomass sources, such as glucose, cellulose, and various kinds of cotton. The pyrolytic process utilizes catalytic effects and CO x sorption enhancements to provide maximum hydrogen production and minimum greenhouse gas emissions, in order to solve the resource utilization of textile biomass. Initially, a systematic glucose pyrolysis screening, as a model molecule, was conducted to analyze different conditioning parameters, such as heating rate (HR), biomass-to-catalyst ratio, and N2 flow rate. In the Li5FeO4 presence, the glucose pyrolytic temperature was reduced from 340 to 130–230 °C, and hydrogen production increased by 2.5–4.9 times. Furthermore, solid residue analyses verified that Li5FeO4 effectively captures carbon oxides, through the lithium carbonate formation. Complementarily, density functional theory explains how Li5FeO4 enhances hydrogen production by studying dissociation bond energies. Based on all these results, additional biomass substrates were tested in the Li5FeO4 presence, exhibiting efficient hydrogen generations. Complementarily, kinetic calculations showed that biomass pyrolysis activation energies were significantly reduced in the ceramic presence. This substantiates the efficacy of Li5FeO4 as a catalyst and carbon dioxide sorbent, particularly in the context of hydrogen production from textile cotton through the so-called sorption-enhanced mechanisms.