Effect of microwave irradiation on hydrogen sorption properties of hand mixed MgH2 – 10 wt.% carbon fibers

• Dehydriding reaction of MgH2 by microwave method.
• Effect of microwaves treatment on the hydrogen sorption properties of Mg.
• Effect of discontinuous microwaves irradiation.

The effect of microwave (MW) irradiation on the hydrogen sorption properties of magnesium powder is explored in the present work. MgH2 – 10 wt.% CFs (CFs = Carbons Fibers) was prepared by hand mixing, dehydrogenated under microwave irradiation for 20 s and then hydrogenated/dehydrogenated at about 300 °C – 1 MPa and 330 °C–0.03 MPa to investigate the effect of microwave irradiation on the solid/gas sorption properties. It has to be noted that the hydrogen absorption capacity and sorption kinetics of the MgH2 – 10 wt.% CFs mixture increased after dehydriding under MW irradiation. The MgH2 – 10 wt.% CFs mixture dehydrogenated by microwave irradiation can absorb about 5.8 wt.% and 5.3 wt.% H at 330 and 300 °C, respectively, within 2 h while the as-prepared MgH2 – 10 wt.% CFs mixture absorb only 4.6 wt.% H within the same duration. It is also demonstrated that MgH2 – 10 wt.% CFs mixture dehydrogenated by microwave irradiation exhibited good hydrogen desorption properties and, as an example, a microwave irradiated sample could release 5.8 wt.% H within 1 h at 330 °C in comparison to the as-prepared MgH2 – 10 wt.% CFs mixture which desorbed 4.4 wt.% H within 3 h. Scanning electron microscopy (SEM) images revealed that the particle sizes of the MW dehydrogenated mixture decreased after several solid/gas sorption cycles. This contribute to the improvement of hydrogen storage properties of the microwaves dehydrogenated MgH2 – 10 wt.% CFs mixture. In addition, the hydrogenated MgH2 – 10 wt.% CFs mixture show reproducible and better microwave-assisted dehydriding reaction during second microwaves cycle.