An article of manufacture comprising a substrate in the form of a tube, sheet, plate or the like having at least on part of the surface thereof an adherent layer of solid catalytic metal and a layer of the catalytic metal in finely divided form firmly adherent to the surface of said catalytic metal. The article of manufacture is made by either forming an engineering shape from catalytic metal or coating an engineering shape with catalytic metal such as by electroplating, depositing a layer of aluminum on the catalytic metal and diffusing said layer of aluminum therein for a sufficient time to form intermetallic compounds with the catalytic metal, but insufficient to detrimentally affect the adhesion of the catalytic metal to the base member and thereafter dissolving the aluminum from the surface by means of a selective solvent for aluminum. The catalytic metal is advantageously nickel.
A highly active metal catalyst is prepared by producing a coating of an alloy on a supporting surface, the alloy containing a catalytic metal such as nickel or platinum and a second metal such as aluminum or iron which is capable of forming a volatile compound, reacting the coating with a material forming a volatile compound with the second metal, and volatilizing the compound, which leaves the supporting surface with a coating of the catalytic metal in a highly active condition.
A membrane electrode assembly for a polymer electrolyte fuel cell has a polymer electrolyte membrane, an anode, and a cathode having a catalytic layer and a diffusion layer. The alloy catalyst contains ruthenium in the anode diffusion layer. The assembly has less loss of efficiency, particularly when operated at high potentials.
A catalyst layer is formed on the metallic surface of a structure constructing a reactor by diffusing a developable metal into the structure by the pack cementation method and developing the diffused metal. The catalyst layer is metallurgically combined with the structure, so that it has excellent mechanical strength and heat conductivity. Thus, by using the structure having the catalyst layer as a heat exchanger type methanation reactor it is possible to obtain a methanation reactor enabling an extremely enhanced rate of reaction to be obtained with superior operability and at great savings.
A denitrating catalyst is produced by plating the surface of unactivated metal with aluminum and immersing the resulting layered product in an aqueous aluminum-dissolving solution to dissolve out the aluminum into the aqueous solution and to thereby activate the surface of the metal.
An improved cathode with a conductive metal core and a Raney-type catalytic surface predominantly derived from an adherent ternary aluminide intermetallic crystalline precursory outer portion of the metal core is disclosed. The precursory outer portion preferably has molybdenum and titanium added to give a precursor alloy having the formula Ni.sub.x Mo.sub.y Ti.sub.z Al.sub.3 where x is within the range of from about 75 to about 94 weight percent, y is within the range of from about 5 to about 20 weight percent and z is within the range of from about 1 to about 5 weight percent of the Ni-Mo-Ti portion of the alloy. Also disclosed is a method of producing a low overvoltage cathode. The method includes the steps of taking a Ni-Mo-Ti core or substrate having about 5-20 weight percentage of Mo and about 1-5 weight percent Ti and coating it with aluminum then heat treating to form a Ni-Mo-Ti-Al ternary alloy with mostly NiAl.sub.3 (ordered orthorhombic) crystal structure and then leaching out the Al to produce a ternary NiMoTi alloy Raney surface.
