The reaction kinetics and mechanism of catalytic decomposition of hydrazine nitrate on Ru/C catalyst in nitric acid solutions

Abstract

Catalytic decomposition of hydrazine nitrate is a very important research topic in the environmental protection field. Herein, we used an Ru/C catalyst for the decomposition of hydrazine nitrate in HNO₃, and the reaction kinetics and mechanism were studied in detail. The kinetics study of the decomposition of hydrazine nitrate (0.01 M) was conducted in the temperature range 313–343 K in 0.1 M HNO₃ in the presence of Ru/C. The apparent activation energy for this reaction was 46.6 kJ mol⁻¹ according to a fitting of the experimental data, while the reaction order was 1.5. It was also found that the reaction pathway of the catalytic decomposition of hydrazine nitrate on the Ru/C catalyst involved two processes: heterogeneous catalytic disproportionation of hydrazine nitrate at the catalyst surface and oxidation of hydrazine nitrate with catalytically generated HNO₂.