Ricerc@Sapienza

The combination of a power to methanol process with the use of waste for carbon supply turns out to be a cleaver solution for sustainable chemical production and waste management as well as long-term energy storage. In the current work, an innovative scheme which integrates waste and energy conversion to produce methanol is addressed. Within the proposed configuration syngas is produced from waste gasification and enriched with hydrogen produced through water electrolysis, in order to accomplish methanol synthesis requirements.

Membrane-electrode assemblies based on chemically stabilised short-side-chain proton exchange Aquivion ® membranes, prepared by extrusion or recast methods, have been investigated for operation at high current density (3–4 A cm −2 ) in water electrolysis cells. A thickness of 90 μm was selected for these perfluorosulfonic acid membranes in order to provide proper resilience to hydrogen crossover under differential pressure operation while allowing operation at high currents.

The electrochemical reduction of caffeine, never carried out previously, yielded in DMF-Et 4 NBF 4 N -formyl- N,1-dimethyl-4-(methylamino)-1 H -imidazole-5-carboxamide, a highly functionalized imidazole product derived from the opening of the uracil ring. This reactivity is different from that of the methylated salt of caffeine, the cathodic reduction of which leads to the opening of the imidazole ring.