Research
Funded Research
Chemical engineering receives funding for development of novel adsorbent for hydrogen storage
The NMSU College of Engineering recently received a second award of $25,000 in funding from the New Mexico Space Grant Consortium and NASA. The award funds a research project focused on the development of a novel adsorbent for hydrogen storage is proposed. Based on our previous research we proposed to apply the ordered mesoporous carbon (OMC) for removing organic sulfurs from hydrocarbon fuels by selective sulfur adsorption. This adsorbent has the advantage of extremely large specific surface area (~6000 m2/g), high accessible pore volume (0.87 cm3/g) and uniform pore size distribution with average pore diameter of 6 nm and very fast kinetics if hydrogen adsorption. If this material is doped with a metal that has a strong affinity for hydrogen with a suitable technique, it could give rise to very high hydrogen uptake through the spillover mechanism even at ambient conditions. NMSU will synthesize the ordered mesoporous carbon adsorbents, dope it with palladium and platinum, make all possible materials characterization of SEM/TEM imaging and XRD pattern, evaluate adsorption equilibrium and kinetics, generate heat of adsorption curve and provide five adsorbent samples for NASA White Sands Test Facility to validate the adsorbent developed in this project. The ultimate goal of this project is to develop a cost-effective and safe on-board hydrogen storing process using physiosorption. Dr. Shuguang Deng, chemical engineering, is the principal investigator of this project and his collaborative partner is Dr. Beeson from the NASA White Sands Test Facility.