title: A trimodal porous carbon as an effective catalyst for hydrogen production by methane decomposition.
abstract: A new type of porous carbon with an interconnected trimodal pore system is synthesized by a nanocasting method using nanoparticulated bimodal micro-mesoporous silica particles as the template. The synthesized template and carbon material are characterized using transmission electron microscopy (TEM), field emission electron scanning microscopy (FESEM) and nitrogen adsorption-desorption test. The synthesized carbon material has an extremely high surface area, a large pore volume and an interconnected pore structure, which could provide abundant active sites and space for chemical reactions and minimize the diffusion resistance of the reactants. The resulting carbon is used as the catalyst for hydrogen production by the thermal decomposition of methane. The catalytic results show that the as-synthesized carbon in this study produces much higher methane conversion and hydrogen yield than the commercial carbon materials.
authors.affiliation: College of Light Industry and Food Sciences, South China University of Technology, Guangzhou 510640, PR China; School of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering, Nanyang Technological University, 50 Nanyang Avenue, Singapore 639798, Republic of Singapore. Electronic address: feyshen@scut.edu.cn.
authors.forename: Yi
authors.initials: Y
authors.lastname: Shen
authors.affiliation: School of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering, Nanyang Technological University, 50 Nanyang Avenue, Singapore 639798, Republic of Singapore. Electronic address: maclua@ntu.edu.sg.
authors.forename: Aik Chong
authors.initials: AC
authors.lastname: Lua
keywords: Hydrogen production; Methane thermocatalytic decomposition; Nanocasting; Trimodal porous carbon