Ag@Pd nanoparticles immobilized on a nitrogen-doped graphene carbon nanotube aerogel as a superb catalyst for the dehydrogenation of formic acid

Abstract

A nitrogen-doped graphene carbon nanotube aerogel was successfully synthesized through a hydrothermal reaction and employed as an excellent support for immobilizing silver core palladium shell nanoparticles. The catalytic activity of the as-obtained material was examined for the dehydrogenation of formic acid as one of the most important catalytic reactions due to the critical global need for green energy and great features of formic acid as a hydrogen carrier. The effect of the support and the metal composition in the catalyst structure were studied for formic acid decomposition. The turnover frequency (TOF) over the Ag@Pd/N-GCNT aerogel was measured to be 413 h⁻¹ at 298 K, which showed the superior activity of the presented catalyst for formic acid dehydrogenation without any additives. The activation energy of the reaction was calculated from the Arrhenius plot of ln TOF versus 1/T for the catalyst and found to be 29.28 kJ mol⁻¹ which is lower than most of the reported values. In addition, the recyclability tests exhibit no significant change in catalytic efficiency after four runs.