Engineering morphologies of yttrium oxide supported nickel catalysts for hydrogen production
Rongbin Zhang, Ziao Tu, Shuai Meng, Gang Feng, Zhang‐Hui Lu, Yingzhi Yu, Tomás Ramı́rez Reina, Feiyang Hu, Xiaohan Chen, Runping Ye
Abstract
Abstract The catalytic performance is highly related to the catalyst structure. Herein, a series of Ni nanoparticles supported on Y 2 O 3 with different morphologies were successfully synthesized via hydrothermal process screening different pH environments. These Ni/Y 2 O 3 catalysts were applied to efficiently produce CO x ‐free H 2 through ammonia decomposition. We identify a significant impact of Y 2 O 3 supports on nickel nanoclusters sizes and dispersion. The experimental results show that Ni/Y11 catalyst achieves 100% ammonia decomposition conversion under a gas hour space velocity (GHSV) of 12,000 ml·h −1 ·g cat −1 and temperature of 650 °C. Such a high level of activity over Ni/Y11 catalyst was attributed to a large specific surface area, appropriate alkalinity, and small Ni nanoparticles diameter with high dispersion.