Hydrogen storage and release from a new promising Liquid Organic Hydrogen Storage Carrier (LOHC): 2-methylindole

We report a new promising Liquid Organic Hydrogen Storage Carrier (LOHC): 2-methylindole in this paper, which has a hydrogen storage capacity of 5.76 wt%. The hydrogenation of 2-methylindole was carried out over a 5 wt% Ru/Al2O3 catalyst in a temperature range of 120-170 °C and a pressure of 7 MPa. The results indicate that the hydrogenation reaction rate increases dramatically with the increase of reaction temperature. The apparent activation energy was found to be 21 kJ/mol. The dehydrogenation of the hydrogenated product 8H-2-methylindole was carried out over a 5 wt% Pd/Al2O3 catalyst at 160-200 °C and 1 atm. Fully dehydrogenation was achieved within 4 h at 190 °C without any side reaction.