Novel intensified nano-structured zero-valente nickel alloy based catalyst for hydrogen production via methane catalytic decomposition

The current research work focuses on the improvement of the catalytic activity as well as the chemical stability of a nickel based catalyst towards the methane catalytic decomposition into hydrogen. Two novel intensified nano-structured macro-porous catalysts were developed during this research. The catalysts revealed through this study are nickel-boron based catalysts supported on carbon fiber. Both catalysts, which at the end of this work demonstrated promising results, were prepared via the electroless plating technique using two nickel precursors. The performance of the produced catalysts was evaluated and compared with a commercial catalyst based on palladium alloy. Unlike the commercial catalyst, the prepared catalysts had significant catalytic activity, in terms of hydrogen fluxes, and high chemical stability during 400 min of testing with no failures detected at a reaction temperature of 700 °C. The structural and morphological properties of the nickel based catalysts were characterized by both scanning electron microscopy (SEM) and X-ray diffraction (XRD).