Hydrogen Induced Abrupt Structural Expansion at High Temperatures of a Ni32Nb28Zr30Cu10 Membrane for H₂ Purification

Oriele Palumbo; Francesco Trequattrini; Madhura Hulyalkar; Suchismita Sarker; Narendra Pal; Dhanesh Chandra; Ted Flanagan; Michael Dolan; Annalisa Paolone

doi:10.3390/membranes6040048

Hydrogen Induced Abrupt Structural Expansion at High Temperatures of a Ni₃₂Nb₂₈Zr₃₀Cu₁₀ Membrane for H₂ Purification

Membranes (Basel). 2016 Nov 21;6(4):48. doi: 10.3390/membranes6040048.

Authors

Oriele Palumbo¹, Francesco Trequattrini^{2

3}, Madhura Hulyalkar⁴, Suchismita Sarker⁵, Narendra Pal⁶, Dhanesh Chandra⁷, Ted Flanagan⁸, Michael Dolan⁹, Annalisa Paolone¹⁰

Affiliations

¹ Consiglio Nazionale delle Ricerche, Istituto del Sistemi Complessi, U.O.S. La Sapienza, Piazzale A. Moro 5, Rome 00185, Italy. oriele.palumbo@roma1.infn.it.
² Consiglio Nazionale delle Ricerche, Istituto del Sistemi Complessi, U.O.S. La Sapienza, Piazzale A. Moro 5, Rome 00185, Italy. francesco.trequattrini@roma1.infn.it.
³ Department of Physics, Sapienza University of Rome, Piazzale A. Moro 5, Rome 00185, Italy. francesco.trequattrini@roma1.infn.it.
⁴ Department of Chemical and Materials Engineering, University of Nevada, Reno, NV 89557, USA. hulyalkar.madhura@gmail.com.
⁵ Department of Chemical and Materials Engineering, University of Nevada, Reno, NV 89557, USA. suchismita13994@gmail.com.
⁶ Department of Chemical and Materials Engineering, University of Nevada, Reno, NV 89557, USA. narendrakpal@gmail.com.
⁷ Department of Chemical and Materials Engineering, University of Nevada, Reno, NV 89557, USA. dchandra@unr.edu.
⁸ Department of Chemistry, University of Vermont, Burlington, VT 05405, USA. Ted.Flanagan@uvm.edu.
⁹ Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation, Queensland Centre for Advanced Technologies, Energy, 1 Technology Court, Pullenvale 4069, Australia. Michael.Dolan@csiro.au.
¹⁰ Consiglio Nazionale delle Ricerche, Istituto del Sistemi Complessi, U.O.S. La Sapienza, Piazzale A. Moro 5, Rome 00185, Italy. annalisa.paolone@roma1.infn.it.

Abstract

Ni-Nb-Zr amorphous membranes, prepared by melt-spinning, show great potential for replacing crystalline Pd-based materials in the field of hydrogen purification to an ultrapure grade (>99.999%). In this study, we investigate the temperature evolution of the structure of an amorphous ribbon with the composition Ni₃₂Nb₂₈Zr₃₀Cu₁₀ (expressed in atom %) by means of XRD and DTA measurements. An abrupt structural expansion is induced between 240 and 300 °C by hydrogenation. This structural modification deeply modifies the hydrogen sorption properties of the membrane, which indeed shows a strong reduction of the hydrogen capacity above 270 °C.

Keywords: DTA; XRD; amorphous membranes; hydrogen sorption; hydrogenation enthalpy; lattice expansion.