(420x) Studying the Adsorption Mechanism of Hydrogen On the Carbon Based Adsorbents for Storage Purposes

Ali Qajar ¹, Ramakrishnan Rajagopalan ², Henry C. Foley ^1,2

¹ Department of Chemical Engineering, PennState University, State College, PA 16802

² Materials Research Institute, PennState University, State College, PA 16802

The goal of this research is to synthesize an adsorbent with the surface area close to 1000 m²/g and the hydrogen heat of adsorption of 15 KJ/mol at room temperature. Nanoporous carbon modified by heteroatoms like B, Cl₂ and Br₂ was made to cover a wide range of samples with different surface chemistry. Surface properties have been studied by TEM, SEM and XPS and pore size distribution analysis. Then, the adsorption of hydrogen on those samples at room temperature and pressures up to 100 bars has been measured. Hydrogen adsorption data and pore size distribution analysis provided a deep insight into the hydrogen adsorption process over all the samples. High pressure data has been used for screening the samples and determining the optimum condition to achieve highest reversible hydrogen adsorption capacity.