Structure and texture of filamentous carbons produced by methane decomposition on NI and NI-CU catalysts Original Research Article

Adsorption methods, mercury porosimetry, electron and tunneling microscopy, and diffraction techniques were used to study filamentous carbon produced by methane decomposition on coprecipitated Ni/alumina and Ni-Cu/alumina catalysts. The porous structure of carbons was generally classified as follows: 1) micropores on the filament surface; 2) mesopores produced by filament surface roughness; 3) meso- and macropores in dense and loosely packed regions of the carbon granules. Adsorption of the various hydrocarbons pointed to the slit-like micropores with ca 0.34 nm of width, uniformly distributed on the filament surface. It was suggested that these micropores are responsible for abnormal adsorption at very low PP0. We supposed that the micropores were formed by the non-aligned and curved graphene layers of the edge planes of graphite which cover about 10% of the total area, while the rest of the filament surface is covered by deformed basal planes producing closed-layer structure.