Hydrogenation and Dehydrogenation of Liquid Organic Hydrogen Carriers: A New Opportunity for Carbon-Based Catalysts

The development of a hydrogen-based economy is the perfect nexus between the need of discontinuing the use of fossil fuels (trying to mitigate climate change), the development of a system based on renewable energy (with the use of hydrogen allowing us to buffer the discontinuities produced in this generation) and the achievement of a local-based robust energy supply system. However, extending the use of hydrogen as an energy vector must still overcome challenging issues, with the key issues being related to its storage. Cryogenic or pressurized storage is relatively expensive, technically complex, and presents important safety concerns. As a promising alternative, the use of organic hydrogen carriers has been suggested in recent years. The ideal carrier will be an organic compound with a low melting point and low viscosity, with a significant number of unsaturated carbon–carbon bonds, in addition to being easy to hydrogenate and dehydrogenate. These properties allow us to store and transport hydrogen in infrastructures designed for liquid fuels, thus facilitating the replacement of fossil fuels by hydrogen