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Activation of silicon towards hydrogen generation by pelletisation

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journal contribution
posted on 2017-03-03, 14:32 authored by Paul Brack, Matthew Chillman, Upul Wijayantha-Kahagala-Gamage, Paul L. Adcock, Simon E. Foster, Sandie DannSandie Dann
One of the barriers to the use of the silicon-water reaction to generate hydrogen for hydrogen fuel cells in portable devices is the lengthy induction period of the reaction caused by the presence of the native oxide layer on the surface of the silicon. Herein is presented a simple pelleting process which can be used to effectively eliminate the induction period in the reaction of pressed silicon powders with 2 wt% sodium hydroxide solution by means of disrupting the native oxide layer. The activation energy of the reaction was found to be 73 kJ/mol by means of an Arrhenius plot. It was also found that the rate of reaction of hydrogen generation could be enhanced by mixing sodium chloride and sodium polyacrylate with the silicon powder before pressing.

Funding

The authors would like to thank the EPSRC (EP/L504816/1) and Intelligent Energy Ltd. for funding this project. PB would also like to thank the SCI for the award of a Messel Scholarship.

History

School

  • Science

Department

  • Chemistry

Published in

Journal of Alloys and Compounds

Volume

704

Pages

146-151

Citation

BRACK, P. ... et al, 2017. Activation of silicon towards hydrogen generation by pelletisation. Journal of Alloys and Compounds, 704, pp. 146-151.

Publisher

Elsevier / © The Authors

Version

  • VoR (Version of Record)

Publisher statement

This work is made available according to the conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0) licence. Full details of this licence are available at: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/ by/4.0/

Acceptance date

2017-01-15

Publication date

2017-01-16

Notes

This is an Open Access Article. It is published by Elsevier under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 Unported Licence (CC BY). Full details of this licence are available at: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

ISSN

0925-8388

Language

  • en