Polymer Nanocomposites for Hydrogen Storage

• Autor(a) principal: Beatrice, Cesar A. G.
• Data de Publicação: 2017
• Outros Autores: Oliveira, Amanda D., Passador, Fabio R. [UNIFESP], Pessan, Luiz A.
• Tipo de documento: Artigo de conferência
• Idioma: eng
• Título da fonte: Repositório Institucional da UNIFESP
• Texto Completo: https://repositorio.unifesp.br/handle/11600/55319; http://dx.doi.org/10.1063/1.5016708
• topic: hydrogen storage; nanocomposites; polyetherimide; aluminum; zeolite

Hydrogen is considered to be a clean, economical and safe renewable energy source that would be ideal to replace fossil fuels, because it is light, highly abundant and its oxidation product (water) is environmentally benign. However, hydrogen is easy to burn (the chemical energy per mass of hydrogen is at least three times larger than that of other chemical fuels), which has the risk of fire and explosion. The problems of transportation and storage restrict the application of hydrogen energy, which has become a key factor in the development and utilization of hydrogen energy. This gas adsorbs at solid surfaces depending on the applied pressure and temperature. For storage purposes in mobile applications, the adsorption of hydrogen has been studied mainly on carbon species, but light and reasonably cheap materials of high surface area should prove to be attractive as well. Porous material is a very promising hydrogen storage material, which stores the gas in the form of molecules at low temperatures and compresses hydrogen into the holes effectively. The purpose of this work was to develop a hybrid porous materials consisting of sulfonated polyetherimide matrix with aluminum nanoparticles and faujasite type zeolite. Dilute solutions were first prepared under stirring at room temperature and the solutions were dried under vacuum. The hybrids were analyzed by differential scanning calorimetry (DSC), thermogravimetric analysis (TGA), transmission electron microscopy (TEM) and hydrogen sorption measurements. The addition of aluminum decreased the glass transition temperature of the hybrids when compared to the sulfonated polymer and the TEM images showed that simply physically mixture occurred between polymer and metallic nanoparticles. Hydrogen sorption tests showed an increase in the amount of hydrogen in the presence of zeolite.