Hydrogen production from formic acid over morphology-controllable molybdenum carbide catalysts

The morphologies of molybdenum carbide catalysts were designed by elaborately selecting organic carbon sources. Based on the scanning electron microscopy (SEM) images and Brunauer-Emmett-Teller (BET) surface area data, it is found that the structure and surface area of MoxCy catalysts can be adjusted by selecting different organic carbon sources. Wire-like MoxCy, nanosheet-like MoxCy and rodlike MoxCy catalysts were obtained by using aniline and p-phenylenediamin (pPd), 4-chloro-o-phenylenediamin (4CloPd), and o-phenylenediamin (oPd) as the carbon sources, respectively, and the nanosheet-like MoxCy showed a relatively high surface area of 30.3 m(2) g(-1). Furthermore, the crystal structure of MoxCy was found to be controlled by the organic carbon source. Notably, alpha-MoxCy nanosheets prepared by using 4CloPd showed the best catalytic performance, in which the formic acid conversion approached 100% with a low CO selectivity when the reaction temperature was higher than 250 degrees C. (C) 2017 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.