Publication date: 21st July 2025
As society becomes increasingly aligned with achieving net-zero emissions, significant efforts have been dedicated to exploring renewable alternatives to fossil fuels to sustainably meet the globes increasing chemical and energy demands. Oxidation of glucose to formic acid presents promise as a route to utilise biomass as a renewable feedstock to address these demands [1]. As a raw feedstock formic acid is utilised in food, textile and pharmaceutical production [1], and had a market value of USD 2.4 billion in 2024. In regards to addressing energy demands, it could be regarded as a liquid hydrogen carrier, with a greater volumetric density than liquid hydrogen, 53.4 g H2/L [2]. However, current methods for glucose conversion to formic acid utilise high pressure, high temperature and glucose:catalyst ratios of ca. 2:1 [3-5].
Here we show that a series of perovskites containing exsolved Ru or Ni are active for glucose oxidation to formic acid under more sustainable reaction conditions. We found that complex oxides, Sr(Mo,M)O4γ-δ where M = Ru or Ni, in a pure perovskite, pure scheelite and perovskite/scheelite mixture all produced formic acid, with the pure perovskite phase demonstrating the highest activity - a sustained formic acid yield of ca. 20 % over the 90-minute duration. This value is lower than that of alternative promising Mo-MnOx catalysts [5] (ca. 65 %). However, our values relate to lowered temperatures (100 vs. 160 oC), lowered pressures (ambient compressed air flow vs. 30 MPa O2) and increased glucose:catalyst ratios (10:1 vs. 2:1). Our results demonstrate the promise of perovskite materials to aid in the production of formic acid utilising green feedstocks and sustainable reaction conditions to address global chemical and energy needs. We anticipate these results to be the foundations for development of more tailored perovskite materials to facilitate green formic acid production with sustainable reaction conditions.
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