Improvement of the dehydrogenating kinetics of the Mg(NH2)2/LiH materials by inducing LiBH4

The lightweight high-capacity Li-Mg-N-H system is a promising candidate for the hydrogen energy storage materials. Nevertheless, the slow dehydrogenating process limits its application. This work is focusing on the effect of LiBH4 on the dehydrogenating kinetics of the Mg(NH2)2/LiH mixture. It indicates that inducing 10 wt.% LiBH4 into the Mg(NH2)2/LiH mixture significantly improves the dehydrogenating kinetics. As a result, it has a near 40 times as large as the effect of the Ti alloy nanoparticles catalyst, under the 200 °C and 0.1 MPa dehydrogenating environment. Based on our previous dehydrogenating kinetics model, the mechanism of this improving effect of LiBH4 is discussed as well, which shows that the eutectic reaction takes a big role in the catalysis process as the arising of nanorods inside of the matrix after several re-/dehydrogenation cycles.