Catalytic Hydrogen Generation from Hydrazine Hydrate for Fuel Cell Application

Hydrazine hydrate has been important class of chemicals as foaming agent, anticorrosion agent, synthetic resin, rubber, agricultural chemicals etc. It also contains a lot of hydrogen ranging from 4.4 to 8.0 Hwt%, depending on its purity. Hydrogen can be released or generated through the catalytic reaction with iridium metal catalyst that has been employed for the thruster propulsion in manoeuvring of the satellite. In this work, the catalyst has been developed and characterized with X-ray diffraction, transmission electron microscopy, atomic force microscopy, extended X-ray absorption fine structure and etc. The obtained granule catalyst was highly active for the decomposition of hydrazine hydrate, thus generating hydrogen at high turnover rate. The catalytic reactor equipped with the honeycomb catalyst containing iridium catalyst also showed the sustainable activity for the hydrogen generation when the liquid hydrazine hydrate was injected in pulse mode.