Synthesis of Ni-Al2O3 Nanocatalyst for Low Temperature Production of Carbon Nanotubes (CNTs)

Abstract

This study focused on the synthesis of nickel - aluminium oxide support (Ni-Al2O3) nanocatalyst by wet impregnation method. The catalyst yield of 86.00 % was obtained at temperature of 400 OC for 3 hours after calcination. The catalyst was characterized to determine the thermal property, Morphology, crystalinity, pore volume/particle size and surface area using TGA, SEM/EDX, XRD, DLS and BET respectively. Results obtained revealed that the catalyst produced has an average particle size of 82.24 nm. It was highly crystalline with BET surface area of 428.352 m2/g, pore size of 0.2817 Â and pore volume of 0.1779 cc/g. Analysis of the results also shows that the catalyst developed is thermally stable with about 0.5% wt loss at 800 OC, which makes the catalyst suitable for CNTs production. The catalyst developed was used to produce carbon nanotubes at operating temperature of 600 OC with argon flow rate of 30ml/min, acetylene flow rate of 300 ml/min and production time of 55 minutes. The results obtained revealed that the yield of 135 % was obtained. The CNTs produced was characterized and the results shows that the produced CNTs is thermally stable with BET surface area of 833.64 m2/g, pore volume of 0.3286 cc/g and pore size of 0.3148 Â. This study demonstrated that employing Ni-Al2O3 nanocatalyst provides suitable route for efficient low temperature production of CNTs.