Magnesium hydride (MgH2) has received outstanding attention as a safe and efficient material to store hydrogen because of its 7.6 wt.% hydrogen content and excellent reversibility. Nevertheless, the application of MgH2 is obstructed by its unfavorable thermodynamic stability and sluggish sorption kinetic. To overcome these drawbacks, ball milling MgH2 is vital in reducing the particle size that contribute to the reduction of the decomposition temperature. However, the milling process would become inefficient in reducing particle sizes when equilibrium between cold-welding and fracturing is achieved. Therefore, to further ameliorate the performance of MgH2, nanosized cobalt titanate (CoTiO3) has been synthesized using a solid-state method and was introduced to the MgH2 system. The different weight percentages of CoTiO3 were doped to the MgH2 system, and their catalytic function on the performance of MgH2 was scrutinized in this study. The MgH2 + 10 wt.% CoTiO3 composite presents the most outstanding performance, where the initial decomposition temperature of MgH2 can be downshifted to 275 °C. Moreover, the MgH2 + 10 wt.% CoTiO3 absorbed 6.4 wt.% H2 at low temperature (200 °C) in only 10 min and rapidly releases 2.3 wt.% H2 in the first 10 min, demonstrating a 23-times-faster desorption rate than as-milled MgH2 at 300 °C. The desorption activation energy of the 10 wt.% CoTiO3-doped MgH2 sample was dramatically lowered by 30.4 kJ/mol compared to undoped MgH2. The enhanced performance of the MgH2-CoTiO3 system is believed to be due to the in situ formation of MgTiO3, CoMg2, CoTi2, and MgO during the heating process, which offer a notable impact on the behavior of MgH2.
Keywords: CoTiO3; MgH2; catalytic activity; hydrogen storage.