Hydrogen Generation from Hydrous Hydrazine over Nickel-Doped Ceria Catalysts Prepared By Solution Combustion Synthesis

Hydrous hydrazine is considered to be a promising hydrogen storage material due to its high hydrogen content (8.0 wt.% for hydrazine monohydrate) and simple byproduct (only nitrogen) via complete decomposition. The key to exploit hydrous hydrazine in practical hydrogen generation applications is to develop efficient, selective, and economic catalysts for the decomposition. In this work, nickel-doped cerium oxides as new non-noble metal catalysts were prepared by solution combustion synthesis (SCS) of CeO₂, followed by impregnation of Ni or by one-step SCS of Ni/CeO₂. The effect of catalyst preparation conditions, including metal weight percentage (10%-80%), type of fuels (glycine, hydrazine, ethylene glycol, etc), ratio of fuel to oxidizer (0.5-3), and some additives on the properties of catalysts were investigated to optimize synthesis conditions and then their catalytic performance were tested. The experimental results demonstrate that the Ni/CeO₂ catalysts via SCS possess high catalytic activity and selectivity to generate hydrogen from hydrous hydrazine.