• Varnagiris, Šarūnas
• Milčius, Darius
• Urbonavičius, Marius

Abstract

One of the main challenges related to hydrogen energy technologies is hydrogen storage in safe and economically reasonable way. The promising solution could be related to the use of aluminium or its alloys to reduce water to hydrogen when it is needed. Aluminium-water reaction is thermodynamically favourable but does not proceed due to the passivation of aluminium surface by the protective aluminium oxide layer which prevents water molecules from direct contact with metal particles. In this work, surface of aluminium particles was modified using novel low temperature plasma activation approach. Such modification technique induces hydrophilicity effect and modified aluminium powder sinks instantly into the water while unmodified powder floats on the top of the water. In current article plasma based activation technology is discussed in details. The structure and morphology of the samples was characterized using SEM, EDS and XRD techniques. BET surface area analysis was performed as well. The elemental composition on nanoscale level and formation of polar groups were experimentally investigated using XPS. Amounts of O/H were measured using inertgas- fusion method. Conducted tests show that hydrogen production starts after one minute of aluminium powder immersion into slightly alkaline water and continued up to 20 minutes. The reaction byproduct is environmentally-friendly and could be used for the aluminium oxide production.

Topics

• impedance spectroscopy
• morphology
• surface
• scanning electron microscopy
• x-ray diffraction
• x-ray photoelectron spectroscopy
• aluminum oxide
• aluminium
• Hydrogen
• Energy-dispersive X-ray spectroscopy
• aluminium powder
• plasma activation