CoB catalysts supported on carbon nanotubes with open tips (o-CNTs) were successfully prepared and used in hydrogen production from NaBH4 hydrolysis. The properties and morphologies of o-CNTs supports and CoB/o-CNTs catalysts were characterized by FT-IR, XRD, SEM-EDX and TEM, which showed that o-CNTs possess different organic functional groups and many open tips and COB can be effectively loaded. Compared with CoB catalysts supported on carbon nanotubes with closed tips (c-CNTs), CoB/o-CNTs exhibit significantly higher hydrogen production rate of up to 3041 ml min(-1) g(-1) under the same conditions. In the experiment, the effect of CoB loading, catalyst supports, and operation temperature on hydrogen production rate was investigated in detail, which demonstrated that o-CNTs possess higher CoB loading than c-CNTs. It was shown that the apparent activation energy of CoB/o-CNTs is 37.63 kJ mol(-1), which is obviously lower than 44.43 kJ mol(-1) of CoB/c-CNTs. (C) 2012 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.