METHOD OF PRODUCING HYDROGEN AND CARBON NANOFIBRES FROM HYDROCARBON GAS Russian patent published in 2011 - IPC C01B3/26 C01B31/02 B82B3/00 

FIELD: chemistry.

SUBSTANCE: invention relates to chemical industry and can be used to produce hydrogen and carbon nanostructured material. A catalyst is first atomised to nanosized particles in an inert gas medium by evaporating a graphite anode, inside of which there is a 0.5 mm thick wire of a metal which is used as the catalyst. The inert gas is then pumped out, an alternating current electric arc is then ignited by touching the electrodes and the inter-electrode space is then increased to 0.3-0.5 mm. The hydrocarbon gas then undergoes high temperature pyrolysis in the electric discharge plasma at temperature 0.5-2 atm inside the reactor to obtain hydrogen and carbon nanostructures. Growth of carbon nanostructures, which are mainly single- and multilayer nanotubes without impurities of other carbon structures, takes place on the synthesised catalyst particles. The inert gas used is helium. The hydrocarbon gas used is methane, associated petroleum gas, acetylene, propane, butane and natural gas. The catalyst use is palladium, iron, nickel or cobalt.

EFFECT: invention enables to obtain nanotubes with relatively uniform size distribution and high length/diametre ratio.

1 dwg