Hydrogen generation from sodium borohydride hydrolysis promoted by MOF-derived carbon supported cobalt catalysts

Abstract

Co-based catalysts represent a kind of low-cost non-noble metal catalysts with attractive performance for catalyzing NaBH4 hydrolysis to produce hydrogen. In the present work, a series of carbon-supported Co catalysts are fabricated through pyrolysis with activated carbon as substrate and metal organic frameworks as Co precursor. Due to the features of metal organic frameworks including well-defined and stable structure and high surface area, Co species is well dispersed in the catalysts with narrow size distribution. The results of NaBH4 hydrolysis experiments indicate that the fabricated catalysts have excellent catalytic activity, especially under alkaline conditions. The catalyzed NaBH4 hydrolysis provides a hydrogen generation rate of 4.9 LH2/(min gCo) at 30 °C, and the activation energy of the reaction is calculated to be 35.09 kJ/mol. Moreover, the good distribution of Co species in the catalysts makes the Co efficiency not decrease significantly even when the Co content in the catalyst increases up to 20.1 wt%, providing possibility to fabricate catalysts with both high metal loading and high metal efficiency. This kind of Co catalyst could provide a very promising choice for controllable hydrogen generation from NaBH4 hydrolysis.