| The utilization of waste biological resources to synthesize value added products benefits the world by reducing environmental pollution.In recent years,carbon has gained much attention as a functional material used for various applications i.e.water purification,hydrogen storage and electrode manufacturing.However,various sources of carbon i.e.petroleum coke,coal and pitch are not environmentally friendly and well as non-renewable,therefore the need to explore new alternatives such as biomass.In this work,waste palm kernel shells obtained from an oil production firm are converted into carbon by an affordable and easy carbonization process called "double-crucible carbonization".After which the palm kernel derived carbon was characterized by various characterization techniques and then used as an additive into magnesium during the milling process.The resulting Mg-PKSC composite after ball milling is hydrided through static hydrogenation to produce a Mg-PKSC hydrogen storage material,after which the hydrogen storage material is characterized by SEM,XRD and its absorption and desorption performance tested by p-c-T and DSC,respectively.Results show that,crystallite sizes of the starting magnesium powder decreased after ball milling at frequency of 30Hz for 1h.PKSC acts as a dispersing agent prevent agglomeration of magnesium particles during the milling process.80Mg20PKSC composite achieves 93%conversion of magnesium into magnesium hydride after static hydrogenation with a hydrogen content of 5.56wt%and a plateau pressure of 1.1MPa at 360?.DSC analysis of all hydrogen storage materials presented only one endothermic peak,but it was found that increasing the amount of PKSC additive in the composite decreases the desorption peak temperature when compared with pure Mg,thus,hydrided 80Mg20PKSC recording a desorption temperature of 388?.Kissinger approach was applied to calculate the apparent activation energy of the synthesized hydrogen storage materials,it was found out to be 137.36 kJ/mol. |
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