The Study Of Hydrogen Absorption By Zirconium And Enhanced Hydrogen Absorption Effect Of Zirconium-Lithium Alloy

The advantages of Zirconium-based Hydrogen Storage Alloy are: high hydrogen absorption capacity, long service life etc. It can be said that zirconium-based alloys are valuable new hydrogen storage material. The nuclear performance of zirconium is excellent because the thermal neutron absorption cross section of zirconium is small, Zirconium and zirconium alloys are very good structural materials in nuclear reactor. As a result of the high hydrogen absorption capacity of zirconium, zirconium hydride is an excellent moderating material.Firstly, the application of zirconium and zirconium alloys was summarized in this paper and a number of relevant research literatures which were both from domestic and abroad were cited. Secondly, the development of hydrogen storage alloys, the classification of hydrogen storage alloys, the principle of hydrogen storage alloys and the application of hydrogen storage alloys were summarized. Then, the zirconium and lithium-zirconium alloys were studied with the method of lithium spreading into zirconium, which gives an effective method to enhance the capacity of hydrogen absorption. The performances of hydrogen absorption and desorption were compared in this research. Finally, secondary ion mass spectrometry (SIMS) was used to analysis the relative content of hydrogen in the sample, X-ray diffraction (XRD) was used to analysis phase and scanning electron microscopy (SEM) was used to analysis the apparent morphology of the samples.The following conclusions were obtained through the study of hydrogen absorption and desorption properties of pure zirconium and zirconium-lithium alloy. The hydrogen absorption capacity of zirconium-lithium alloy is larger than the hydrogen absorption capacity of pure zirconium at 500 centi-degree under different pressures, The hydrogen absorption capacity of zirconium-lithium alloy is larger than the hydrogen absorption capacity of pure zirconium at 0.24MPa at different temperatures.The apparent activation energy of pure zirconium for hydrogen absorption is 41.51±3.69 kJ / mol, The apparent activation energy of zirconium-lithium alloy for hydrogen absorption is 25.10±6.75 kJ / mol, the reaction energy barrier after Li was put into the zirconium.XRD studies showed that the d values of Zr lattice increased much after hydrogen absorption and the d value decrease after hydrogen desorption, But the d values of Zr lattice after hydrogen desorption was still a little larger than pure zirconium, which shovs that there is a little hydrogen in the metals after hydrogen desorption.The cracks of pure zirconium after hydrogen absorption are less than the cracks of pure zirconium after hydrogen desorption by SEM analysis, The cracks of zirconium-lithium after hydrogen absorption are less than the cracks of zirconium-lithium after hydrogen desorption by SEM analysis. There are many cracks and holes which increase the effective surface area for further hydrogen absorption after repeated hydrogen absorption and desorption.