Abstract
Hydrogen has been considered as an important and essential future energy source. But the storage of the hydrogen is a difficult problem and many studies were focused on this matter. However, the MTH-system (methylcyclohexane, toluene, hydrogen) was proposed for storage of hydrogen by Taube et al. and that is the reaction of hydrogen with toluene to give methylcyclohexane. One toluene molecule can store six hydrogen atoms to form methylcyclohexane. In this form the hydrogen can be easily stored in liquid organic hydrides and transported at ambient pressure in tanks. Hence, this study is focused on the catalytic dehydrogenation of methylcyclohexane. Since supported platinum and nickel were employed as catalysts in literature, in this study, porous Pt and Ni were prepared and tested for the dehydrogenation reaction. When the porous Pt catalyst was applied to the dehydrogenation it showed higher activity in the reaction and higher selectivity to toluene. Specially at higher pressure, it showed almost 100 % conversion and 100 % selectivity and hence porous platinum could be considered as best for the given reaction.