Iridium Catalyzed Dehydrogenation in a Continuous Flow Reactor as a Tool Towards Practical On-Board Hydrogen Generation From LOHCs

To enable the large-scale use of hydrogen fuel cells for mobility applications, convenient methods for on-board hydrogen storage and release need to be developed. A promising approach is liquid organic hydrogen carriers (LOHCs), since these are safe, available on a large scale and compatible with existing re-fuelling infrastructure. Usually, LOHC dehydrogenation is carried out in batch-type reactors by transition metals and their complexes and suffers from slow H 2 release kinetics and/or inability to reach high energy density by weight due to low conversion or the need to dilute the reaction mixture. Here we report the use of a continuous flow reactor in combination with a heterogenized iridium pincer complex, which enables a tremendous increase in LOHC dehydrogenation rates. Thus, dehydrogenation of isopropanol is performed in a regime that in terms of gravimetric energy density, hydrogen generation rate and precious metal content is potentially compatible with applications in a fuel-cell powered car.