40 th Meeting of the Italian Section of the Combustion Institute Hydrogen evolution over nano-Cu/TiO 2 catalyst through photoreforming of alcohols: a kinetic investigation Ilaria Di Somma a , Laura Clarizia b , Danilo Russo b , Roberto Andreozzi b , Raffaele Marotta b disomma@irc.cnr.it a Istituto di Ricerche sulla Combustione, Centro Nazionale delle Ricerche IRC-CNR, p.le V. Tecchio 80, 80125 Napoli, Italia. b Dipartimento di Ingegneria Chimica, dei Materiali e della Produzione Industriale, Università di Napoli Federico II, p.le V. Tecchio 80, 80125 Napoli, Italia. Abstract Hydrogen generation through photocatalytic reforming of glycerol and methanol was investigated using metal copper-TiO 2 nanoparticles, prepared “in situ” by reduction of cupric ions. A modeling investigation was performed through the development of a simplified kinetic model tested to predict hydrogen generation rates for experimental runs carried out at different initial concentrations of sacrificial agent (methanol and glycerol) and at varying photocatalyst load. The modeling investigation allowed to estimate for the first time the unknown kinetic parameters regulating hydrogen generation mechanism. This study provides a reliable approach to model photocatalytic reforming of alcohols over metal modified-TiO 2 catalyst for hydrogen generation. Introduction A great attention has been devoted by researchers in recent years to hydrogen as a clean energy carrier, along with the identification of new processes for its production from non-fossil fuels. Water photosplitting, photoelectrolysis and photoreforming are some of new sustainable technologies expected to allow in the near future an efficient conversion of solar energy into chemical one. In particular, photoreforming is of direct interest to the research community due to its ability of integrating hydrogen generation and wastewater treatment. Indeed, wastewater organic pollutants can be used as hole scavengers able of reducing the occurrence of electron–hole recombination reaction, thus enabling photogenerated electrons to react with protons. In order to further enhance hydrogen generation efficiency, a commonly used strategy is to modify TiO 2 , the most used semiconductor in photocatalytic studies, with noble metal nanoparticles, such as Au, Ag, Pd, and Pt deposited on the oxide photocatalyst surface [1,2] due to photogenerated electrons transfer from TiO 2 surface to superficial metal spots. The use of copper species instead of noble metals deposited on the semiconductor surface for hydrogen production has been investigated in the last years [3]. In previous studies some of the Authors investigated hydrogen generation from different oxygenated compounds by adopting a metal copper-TiO 2 P25