Hydrogen and Calorimetry Case Studies

Now that technologies to use hydrogen as a clean fuel are readily available, like the Proton Exchange Membrane Fuel Cell (PEMFC), and can be developed at an industrial scale, research mainly focuses on the barrier of development which is hydrogen storage for delayed use. In fact, if nowadays the H2 production methods are well known and controlled, the storage and transportation of the fuel remain major obstacles to its use [3]. 

Institut de recherches sur la catalyse et I environnement de Lyon, UMR5256, CNRS-Universite Lyonl, 2 avenue Einstein, 69626 Villeurbanne, France e-mail simona.bennici ircelyon.univ-lyon 1. fr 

Springer Series in Materials Science 154, DOl 10.1007/978-3-642-11954-5 ll, Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg 2013 

An appropriate catalyst is necessary to carry out the hydrolysis reaction at a high rate. Noble metal based catalysts were initially developed and studied for this purpose [5, 12-15], but the high cost of these materials associated with the low supply available shifted the focus of research towards cheaper catalytic materials. In fact, non-noble metals that form boride compounds such as Ni-B or Co-B alloys are efficient and low-cost catalysts for this reaction [6, 8, 11, 12, 16-19]. 

For all the cited hydrogen storage systems, a precise determination of the heat of reaction is needed for an industrially applicable system design and evaluation of feasibility. The measurement of the heat evolved during a catalytic reaction or a 

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The hydrophilicity of nanooxides, which plays a very important role in their applications and affects many of their properties, was analyzed using calorimetry (oxides were degassed at 473 K at low pressures for several hours) and H NMR spectroscopy (oxides were equilibrated in air) methods applied to samples after different pretreatments. This characteristic is linked to the possibility of the formation of strong hydrogen and donor-acceptor bonds or/and dissociative adsorption of water. The treatments before the calorimetric measurements resulted in desorption of intact water and a portion of dissociatively adsorbed water (=MOH, M 0(H)M"=, where M=Si, Al, or Ti) from both surface and volume of oxide nanoparticles. However, in the case of the NMR measuranents, surface and volume water was readsorbed from air. Therefore, one could expect that the heat effects on the adsorption of water on the calorimetric measuranents should be stronger than that on the NMR measurements. This is typically observed for the samples studied with the exception of SA8 and ST20 (Table 2.12). 

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