Preparation of Hollow Silicon Carbide Microspheres and Their Application in Catalysis of Hydrogen Production from NaBH₄

Hollow silicon carbide(SiC) microspheres were prepared by carbothermal reduction method, in which ellipsoidal silica and phenolic resin were used as silica and carbon precursors, respectively. The ellipsoidal silica microparticles were synthesized by TEOS hydrolysis with the yeasts as templates. The as-synthesized SiC was characterized by XRD, SEM, N₂ absorption-desorption and FT-IR. The effects of the reaction temperature and n_C/n_Si on the surface area as well as the formation mechanism of SiC microspheres were investigated. Then the synthesized SiC was used as carrier of the Ru/SiC catalyst for the sodium borohydride hydrolysis reaction. Experimental results showed that the obtained catalyst possessed good catalytic activity and the maximum hydrogen production rate was up to 2 280 mL/(g·min).