New Hydrogen Generation Process By Catalytic Hydrolysis Of NaBH₄

Hydrogen gas has been widely used in the chemical industry,and is believed tobe a clean energy for the future. To overcome the shortage of energy and theenvironmental pollution, it is very important to develop the hydrogen technology.Fuel cell is an apparatus based on electrochemistry, and hydrogen gas is the best fuelfor it. In fuel cell the energy generated through the reaction of hydrogen and oxygenin the atmosphere can be used for driving cars or other purposes. However, there arestill problems, such as efficient production and storage of hydrogen, before the fuelcell comes into practice.In recent years, it has been found that high-purity hydrogen gas can be generatedby catalytic hydrolysis of sodium borohydride, NaBH4. In this process, the rate ofhydrogen generation can be easily controlled;the hydrogen gas is very pure and canbe directly used for the fuel cell;and the hydrogen gas can be even generated under0°C. However, there are some shortages in the reported processes, for example,precious metals-based catalysts are used, and the catalyst life is short due to the lossof the active components.In the present work, cheaper metals such as Fe,Co,Ni,Mn ions or their mixturewere used as the catalysts for the generation of hydrogen by the hydrolysis of NaBH4.The results showed that among these metals, Co is very active, but the others are not;Fe can promote the activity of Co;the promoted Co catalyst system can effectivelycatalyze the hydrolysis of NaBH4 to generate hydrogen for the fuel cell. Thecharacterization results indicated that after reaction, the catalyst components werereduced and amorphous alloys formed.Based on the obtained results, the parameters for driving a car for 500 kilometerswith the highest rate of 100 kilometers per hour, such as the amount of sodiumborohydride, the amount of the catalyst and the volume of the reactor being required,the removing of the heat generated, etc, were calculated. The results show that thisreaction system can be used for the fuel cell to drive cars.