Abstract
The catalytic dehydrogenation of NaBH(4) for the generation of H(2) has a lot of potential as a reliable and achievable approach to make H(2), which could be used as a safe and cost-effective energy source in the near future. This work describes the production of unique trimetallic NiCrPd-decorated carbon nanofiber (NiCrPd-decorated CNF) catalysts using electrospinning. The catalysts demonstrated exceptional catalytic activity in generating H(2) through NaBH(4) dehydrogenation. The catalysts were characterized using SEM, XRD, TEM, and TEM-EDX analyses. NiCrPd-decorated CNF formulations have shown higher catalytic activity in the dehydrogenation of NaBH4 compared with NiCr-decorated CNFs. It is likely that the better catalytic performance is because the three metals in the NiCrPd-decorated CNF structure interact with each other. Furthermore, the NiCrPd-decorated CNFs catalyzed the dehydrogenation of NaBH(4) with an activation energy (E(a)) of 26.55 KJ/mol. The kinetics studies showed that the reaction is first-order dependent on the dose of NiCrPd-decorated CNFs and zero-order dependent on the concentration of NaBH(4).