Immobilization of CoCl2 (cobalt chloride) on PAN (polyacrylonitrile) composite nanofiber mesh filled with carbon nanotubes for hydrogen production from hydrolysis of NaBH4 (sodium borohydride)

Fang Li, Ernest Evans Arthur, Dahye La, Qiming Li and Hern Kim

Energy, 2014, vol. 71, issue C, 32-39

Abstract: Composite nanofiber sheets containing multiwalled carbon nanotubes and cobalt chloride dispersed in PAN (polyacrylonitrile) were produced by an electrospinning technique. The synthesized PAN/CoCl2/CNTs composite nanofiber was used as the catalyst for hydrogen production from the hydrolysis of sodium borohydride. FT-IR characterization showed that the pretreated CNTs possess different organic functional groups which help improve the compatibility between CNTs and PAN organic polymer. SEM (scanning electron microscopy), TEM (transmission electron microscopy) and EDX (energy-dispersive X-ray technique) were used to characterize the composite nanofiber and it was found that CNTs can be coaxially dispersed into the PAN nanofiber. During the hydrolysis of NaBH4, this PAN/CoCl2/CNTs composite nanofiber exhibited higher catalytic activity compared to the composite without CNTs doping. Kinetic analysis of NaBH4 hydrolysis shows that the reaction of NaBH4 hydrolysis based on this catalyst can be ascribed to the first-order reaction and the activation energy of the catalyst was approximately 52.857 kJ/mol. Meanwhile, the composite nanofiber catalyst shows excellent stability and reusability in the recycling experiment.

Keywords: PAN (polyacrylonitrile)/CoCl2 (cobalt chloride)/CNTs (carbon nanotubes); Composite nanofiber; Sodium borohydride; Hydrogen production (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2014
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (4)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0360544214005519
Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:energy:v:71:y:2014:i:c:p:32-39

DOI: 10.1016/j.energy.2014.03.130

Access Statistics for this article

Energy is currently edited by Henrik Lund and Mark J. Kaiser

More articles in Energy from Elsevier
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Catherine Liu ().