II International Symposium on Carbon for Catalysis ABSTRACTS

OP-<strong>II</strong>-5
CARBON NANOFIBRES UNIFORMLY GROWN ON ALUMINA WASHCOATED
CORDIERITE MONOLITHS
García-Bordejé E., Kvande I. 1 , Chen D. 1 , Rønning M. 1
Instituto de Carboquímica, CSIC, Miguel Luesma Castán 4, 50015, Zaragoza, Spain
1 Department of Chemical Engineering, Norwegian University of Science and Technology
(NTNU), N-7491 Trondheim, Norway.
e-mail: ronning@chemeng.ntnu.no
1. Introduction
Carbon nanofibres as catalyst supports have shown promising advantages compared to
activated carbon, such as: (i) the high purity of the material for avoiding self-poisoning, (ii)
the mesoporous nature of these supports can be of interest for liquid-phase reactions, and (iii)
specific metal-support interactions exists that can affect catalytic activity and selectivity [1].
However, carbon nanofibres in powder form have some drawbacks for slurry phase operation
since the presence of fines may lead to agglomeration and difficulty of filtration. In order to
optimise the hydrodynamic properties and to allow effective contact with the reactants it is
therefore necessary to implement the CNFs into larger objects. This is the reason why
considerable research efforts are dedicated to the immobilisation of CNFs on macroscopic
supports. Carbon nanofibres have been immobilised on different substrates such as activated
carbon [2], graphite felt [3], metallic filters [4] and foams [5] and ceramic monoliths [6].
In the present work, a uniform layer of CNFs has been grown on cordierite monoliths by
thermal decomposition of C 2 H 6 :H 2 or CH 4 :H 2 gas mixtures. As a result, a novel CNFmonolith
composite has been synthesised that hold good promises as catalyst support for
liquid phase reactions.
2. Experimental
Cordierite monoliths (from Corning, 1 cm diameter, 5 cm length, 400 cpsi) were washcoated
with alumina. Nickel was deposited on the washcoat by adsorption from a pH-neutral nickel
nitrate solution. The as-prepared catalyst was used as substrate to grow CNFs. The resulting
CNF-monolith composites were characterised by SEM, N 2 physisorption (BET) and
temperature programmed oxidation (TPO).
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