Highly Active/Selective Synergistic Catalysis of Bimetallic Pd/Co Catalyst Anchored on Air-Mediated Nanocarbons for H2 Production by Formic Acid Dehydrogenation

Designing a stable, efficient, highly selective, and low-cost dehydrogenation catalyst, using formic acid to produce hydrogen energy, is challenging even today. This paper reports a facile preparation method of constructing Pd–Co alloy-composite catalyst for hydrogen production using formic acid by heterogeneous catalyst decomposition. The results demonstrate that introducing a nonprecious cobalt metal could significantly reduce precious palladium metal usage. Moreover, the particle size reduces from 13.50 nm (without Co) to 3.4 nm (with Co). More importantly, the Pd 2+ amount in the catalyst affect the catalytic decomposition of formic acid to produce hydrogen. Additionally, Pd 0.9 Co 0.1 /C 650 exhibits excellent catalytic activity and cyclic catalytic stability and it is one of the best non-precious metal doped Pd-based catalysts. The development of a synthetic method with the addition of nonprecious metal in this paper opens up a new avenue for cheap and efficient catalysts for application scenarios of hydrogen production. H 2 production by formic acid dehydrogenation. Graphical abstract