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Download fileAn assessment of the viability of hydrogen generation from the reaction of silicon powder and sodium hydroxide solution for portable applications
journal contribution
posted on 2016-09-08, 08:53 authored by Paul Brack, Sandie DannSandie Dann, Upul Wijayantha-Kahagala-Gamage, Paul L. Adcock, Simon E. FosterThe gravimetric hydrogen storage efficiency of silicon has been widely reported as 14wt.%, suggesting that this material should be an excellent hydrogen generation source for portable applications. However, in the case of the reaction of silicon powder with 20wt.% sodium hydroxide solution at 50°C, the observed production of hydrogen fails to realize these high expectations unless a large excess of basic solution is used during the reaction, rendering the use of silicon in such systems uncompetitive compared with chemical hydride based technologies. By investigating the molar ratio of water:silicon from a large excess of water towards the stoichiometric 2:1 ratio dictated by the reaction equation, this study shows that for the reaction of silicon in 20wt.% sodium hydroxide solution, the quantity of hydrogen produced decreases as the 2:1 ratio expected from the equation for the reaction is approached. Furthermore, in order to reach 80% of the theoretical efficacy, a molar ratio of 20:1, or 12mL of 20wt.% sodium hydroxide solution per gram of silicon, would be required. These results suggest that the actual gravimetric hydrogen storage capacity is less than 1%, casting doubts as to whether the use of silicon for hydrogen generation in real systems would be possible.
Funding
The authors would like to thank the EPSRC 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
International Journal of Energy ResearchCitation
BRACK, P. ... et al., 2016. An assessment of the viability of hydrogen generation from the reaction of silicon powder and sodium hydroxide solution for portable applications. International Journal of Energy Research. DOI: 10.1002/er.3604.Publisher
John Wiley & Sons (© 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/Publication date
2016-08-11Notes
This is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits use, distribution andreproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.ISSN
0363-907XeISSN
1099-114XPublisher version
Language
- en