Preparation of Effective NiCrPd-Decorated Carbon Nanofibers Derived from Polyvinylpyrrolidone as a Catalyst for H 2 Generation from the Dehydrogenation of NaBH 4.

The catalytic dehydrogenation of NaBH4 for the generation of H2 has a lot of potential as a reliable and achievable approach to make H2, 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 H2 through NaBH4 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 NaBH4 with an activation energy (Ea) 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 NaBH4. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]