CATALYSIS OF HYDROGEN DESORPTION FROM MgH2

Hydrogen is considered to be clean fuel for various energy sources in the near future. One of technical problems in this area is its effective storage. MgH2 is very perspective material whose main advantage is high hydrogen storage capacity (theoretically 7.6 wt.% H-2). However, there are negative features of this material as a hydrogen storage medium: before all, it is its poor hydrogen desorption kinetics. Therefore, much effort has been devoted in the past to find out possible ways how to enhance the MgH2 desorption rate and how to shift this material close to technical applications. It is known that nickel and Mg2Ni enhance hydrogen desorption from MgH2. This paper continues our previous works on hydrogen desorption from Mg-Ni -based materials. It is devoted to the investigation of separate catalytic effect of Mg2NiH4 and Mg2Ni upon the hydrogen desorption from the principal component of the material - MgH2. It was found that catalytic efficiency of Mg2NiH4 is much higher than that of Mg2Ni.