Ru Nanoparticles Immobilized on Chitosan as Effective Catalysts for Boosting NH₃BH₃ Hydrolysis

Abstract

Developing an advanced heterogeneous catalyst is essential for realizing high‐performance ammonia borane (AB) hydrolysis, which is a safe and efficient way to generate hydrogen. In this work, a series of ruthenium (Ru) nanoparticles (NPs) immobilized on chitosan (CS) natural polymers are synthesized via an adsorption‐in situ reduction method. Various analytical techniques, including XRD, XPS, FT‐IR, SEM and TEM, are adopted to explore the structure‐catalytic performance relationships of the obtained catalysts for hydrolysis of AB. Benefitting from the possible interaction between Ru NPs and the amino and hydroxyl groups in CS, the as‐prepared catalysts exhibit excellent catalytic behavior for hydrogen generation from AB hydrolysis. Catalyzed by the optimal Ru/CS, the turnover frequency reaches up to 331.8 min−1 in NaOH solution at 303 K, and the corresponding apparent activation energy is 41.3 kJ mol−1, which are superior to many results previously reported. This work demonstrates that the obtained Ru/CS is a promising and efficient catalyst for the hydrolysis of solid hydrogen storage materials.

Catalytic hydrogen storage in liquid hydrogen carriers

“…In 2022, Liu et al immobilized Ru nanoparticles on natural chitosan polymers, achieving a TOF value of 331.8 min −1 and an E a value of 41.3 kJ mol −1 . 334 Xu et al first applied metal–organic frameworks in hydrolysis with the help of Pt nanoparticles in MIL-101's nanopores, which showed an activation energy of 40.7 kJ mol −1 . 335 The present results bring light to new opportunities in the superiority of porous materials in hydrolysis.…”

Chitosan as a Bio-Based Ligand for the Production of Hydrogenation Catalysts

“…In fact, CS has been widely studied as a ligand for the preparation of homogeneous and heterogeneous catalysts employed for carbon-carbon coupling, oxidation, hydrogenation and click reactions, among others [25,[33][34][35][36][37][38][39]. Concerning hydrogenation reactions, various examples have been reported in the literature regarding the use of chitosan as a ligand in the presence of Pd(0) and Pd(0) nanoparticles supported on silica [33,36,[40][41][42], while Rh(0) and Ru(0) have been investigated less [43][44][45][46].…”

“…ligand in the presence of Pd(0) and Pd(0) nanoparticles supported on silica [33,36,[40][41][42], while Rh(0) and Ru(0) have been investigated less [43][44][45][46].…”

Efficient Near-Infrared-Activated Photocatalytic Hydrogen Evolution from Ammonia Borane with Core-Shell Upconversion-Semiconductor Hybrid Nanostructures

“…Inspired by the Fujishima Honda Effect reported in 1972 [38], a plethora of semiconductor-based photocatalysts, such as TiO 2 , g-C 3 N 4 , CdS [39], various perovskites [40][41][42][43][44][45][46][47][48][49][50][51][52][53][54][55], and WO 3 /rGO [56] have been utilized in hydrogen production. Additionally, non-semiconductor catalysts based on metals including platinium [57], rhenium [58], ruthenium [59,60], and iridium [61] have also been used in the catalytic generation of H 2 [62,63]. For these photocatalysts with their light absorption threshold confined in either ultraviolet (UV, 300-400 nm) or visible (VIS, 400-700 nm) region [64], the major limitation is that only UV and/or visible light photons can be utilized, which accounts for 5% and 43% of the full solar spectrum, respectively.…”