Synthesis and application of CeO2–NiO loaded TiO2 nanofiber as novel catalyst for hydrogen production from sodium borohydride hydrolysis

• A simple electrospinning is used to allow uniform deposition of spherical CeO2 and NiO NPs on nanofiber based TiO2.
• The prepared materials were characterized by SEM, EDX, TEM, XRD, BET and FT–IR analyses.
• The presence of Ni with Ce has beneficial attributes on the catalyst performance by structural modifications.
• In this study, 1:2 ratio of Ce/Ni was found to be the best for CeO2–NiO–TiO2 catalyst system.
• The catalysts obtained show high catalytic activity and good stability to produce H2 with higher reusability.

A simple electrospinning technique was used to fabricate cerium–nickel loaded titanium nanofibers for efficient use in catalytic applications for hydrogen production. The prepared nanofibers were characterized by the SEM (scanning electron microscopy), EDX (energy dispersive X-ray spectrometer), FTIR (fourier transform infrared spectroscopy), XRD (X-ray diffraction), BET (Brunauer–Emmett–Teller) technique and TEM (transmission electron microscopy). The SEM and TEM analyses showed that fabricated nanofibers were defect-free and had well deposition of cerium and nickel. The BET analysis concluded that cerium–nickel loaded titanium oxide nanofiber showed greater surface area and high porosity than other nanofiber compositions. The experimental results showed that addition of cerium with nickel enhanced the catalytic activity significantly, but excessive cerium-loading had a negative effect on sodium borohydride hydrolysis. Activation energy of cerium–nickel loaded titanium oxide nanofiber was comparatively lesser than nickel-loaded titanium oxide nanofiber. It was evident that cerium had a beneficial effect in the catalytic activity for hydrogen production. Furthermore, it is very convenient to recover the catalyst at the end of reactions; the solid catalyst left could be readily reused for the next consecutive cycles.