Impregnation of nickel on mesoporous ZSM-5 templated carbons as candidate material for hydrogen storage

A series of carbon with the ZSM-5 mesoporous template (ZMC) and nickel impregnated ZMC (Ni/ZMC) were synthesized and gravimetrically determined its adsorption capacity for H₂ gas. ZMC carbon was synthesized using a hard template method at a carbonation temperature of 900 °C with sucrose as a source of carbon. A mesoporous ZSM-5 template was synthesized using a hydrothermal method at aging and crystallization temperatures of respectively 60 and 150 °C for as long as 24 h. The isothermal results of adsorption-desorption of N₂ showed that the larger the Ni loading on the supporting ZMC carbon, the smaller the surface area of the ZMC specific carbon. The distribution of the pore size that was counted by using the BJH method, which was applied to all the samples, was as big as 3.8 nm. The adsorption capacity of H₂ was measured using the gravimetry method at ambient temperature for Ni/ZMC-5, Ni/ZMC-15, and Ni/ZMC-25, which each gave a weight percentage of 0.33, 0.66 and 0.65% respectively, whilst the ZMC carbon has a weight percentage of 2.18%.