High-capacity hydrogen release through hydrolysis of NaB3H8

NaB3H8 has advantages over NaBH4 and NH3BH3, two most widely studied chemical hydrides for hydrogen storage via hydrolysis. NaB3H8 has an extraordinary high solubility in water and thus possesses a high theoretical capacity of 10.5 wt% H via hydrolysis, in contrast to 7.5 wt% for NaBH4 and 5.1 wt% for NH3BH3. NaB3H8 is reasonably stable in water which makes it unnecessary to add corrosive NaOH as a stabilizer as the case for NaBH4. Furthermore, hydrolysis of NaB3H8 can be catalyzed by a Co-based catalyst with fast kinetics that is comparable to Ru-based catalysts. Therefore, cost-effective hydrolysis of NaB3H8 is possible for practical applications. A high capacity of 7.4 wt% H was achieved when water was included in the materials weight.