Lithium aluminum hydride (LiAlH4) is considered as an attractive candidate for hydrogen storage owing to its favorable thermodynamics and high hydrogen storage capacity. However, its reaction kinetics and thermodynamics have to be improved for the practical application. In our present work, we have systematically investigated the effect of NiCo2O4 (NCO) additive on the dehydrogenation properties and microstructure refinement in LiAlH4. The dehydrogenation kinetics of LiAlH4 can be significantly increased with the increase of NiCo2O4 content and dehydrogenation temperature. The 2 mol% NiCo2O4-doped LiAlH4 (2% NCO LiAlH4) exhibits the superior dehydrogenation performances, which releases 4.95 wt% H-2 at 130 degrees C and 6.47 wt% H-2 at 150 degrees C within 150 min. In contrast, the undoped LiAlH4 sample just releases <1 wt% H-2 after 150 mm. About 3.7 wt.% of hydrogen can be released from 2% NCO-LiAlH4 at 90 degrees C, where total 7.10 wt% of hydrogen is released at 150 degrees C. Moreover, 2% NCO-LiAlH4 displayed remarkably reduced activation energy for the dehydrogenation of LiAlH4. Copyright (C) 2014, Hydrogen Energy Publications, LLC. Published by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.