Abstract
Formic acid (FA), as a safe and renewable liquid hydrogen storage material, has attracted extensive attention. In this paper, a series of Mo-modified pseudoboehmite supported Ni catalysts were developed and evaluated for efficient hydrogen production from formic acid. Pseudoboehmite (PB) as a catalyst carrier was used for the first time. Ni/PB and NiMo/PB possessed a mesostructure, and the pore size distribution was mainly concentrated between 2 and 20 nm. The oxygen vacancies caused by Mo enhanced Ni anchoring, thus inhibiting Ni sintering. Compared with Ni10/PB (7.62 nm), Ni10Mo1/PB had smaller Ni particles (5.08 nm). The Ni-O-Al solid solutions formed through the interaction of Ni with the PB improved the catalytic performance. Ni10Mo1/PB gave the highest conversion of 92.8% with a H(2) selectivity of 98% at 300 °C, and the catalyst activity hardly decreased during the 50 h stability test. In short, Ni10Mo1/PB was a promising catalyst for hydrogen production from formic acid because of the oxygen vacancy anchoring effect as well as the formation of Ni-O-Al solid solutions which could effectively suppress the Ni sintering.