Facile achieved dehydrogenation of Lithium borohydride at 64 °C through a novel plate-like Li-Al-Cl compound

Lithium borohydride (LiBH4) is a promising material for hydrogen transportation and storage due to its high hydrogen capacity (18.5 wt%). However, its stable thermodynamics is not conducive for commercial applications. In this work, the effective preparation of plate-like LiAl5O8/Al2O3 with Cl ion (Li-Al-Cl) was achieved through the hydrogenation of LiAl-based two-dimensional layered double hydroxide (LiAl LDH). During the first stage of dehydrogenation, Cl−1 in Li-Al-Cl substituted some BH4− in LiBH4, leading to a lower initial hydrogen desorption temperature of 64 °C for the 20 wt% Li-Al-Cl modified LiBH4. Moreover, the melting LiBH4 continued to react with Li-Al-Cl to generate AlB2, Li2B12H12, LiH and LiAlO2 in the second stage of fast hydrogen desorption. In addition, even at a lower temperature of 350 °C, LiBH4 + 20 wt% Li-Al-Cl could discharge 4.96 wt% H2, while 1.99 wt% H2 was released by pure LiBH4 under identical conditions.