Hydrogen generation from hydrolysis of NaBH4 based on high stable NiB/NiFe2O4 catalyst

Recently environment-friendly hydrogen generation for NaBH4 hydrolysis using improved method has attracted much attention. Here a novel catalyst NiB/NiFe2O4 was developed through an impregnation-chemical reduction method, which was utilized in hydrogen production from NaBH4 hydrolysis. In this study, NiFe2O4 ferrite supports were prepared via a combined EDTA-citric acid complexing method. NiFe2O4 ferrites were characterized in terms of phase structure and surface morphologies using X-ray diffractometer as well as scanning electron microscopes. It can be found that the particle size of NiFe2O4 calcined at 873 K is about 30–40 nm which exhibits an optimized spherical morphologies. The factors such as active metal loading amount, reaction temperature and recycling number on NiB/NiFe2O4 catalyst were investigated in detail. A hydrogen generation rate as high as 299.88 ml min−1 g−1 for NiB/NiFe2O4 catalyst can be achieved using 5wt.% NaBH4 solution at 298 K which is much higher than pure NiB. Moreover, an improved recycling stability can be obtained for supported NiB/NiFe2O4 catalyst. The 83.3% of initial catalytic activity can be retained for NiB/NiFe2O4 catalyst after the fifth run. The experimental results show that the usage of NiFe2O4 support can enhance the catalytic activity and recycling stability of NiB active metals.