Indirect hydrolysis of sodium borohydride: Isolation and crystallographic characterization of methanolysis and hydrolysis by-products

The use of sodium borohydride as a means for hydrogen generation has focused on the base-stabilized hydrolysis reaction, while literature for the methanolysis of sodium borohydride remains scarce. Sodium borohydride methanolysis is an alternative for hydrogen production from sodium borohydride and has a number of advantages over hydrolysis reactions in terms of by-product handling. Previous studies have shown that the presence of water in methanol significantly retards the rate of hydrogen evolution from NaBH₄. This article reports the production of hydrogen from NaBH₄ using rigorously dried methanol. In addition, the solid-state structure of the methanolysis by-product is reported, which lends pertinent information for its hydrolysis for methanol recovery. Also reported is the solid-state structure of the hydrolysis by-product.