Effect of cold rolling on the hydrogen absorption and desorption kinetics of Zircaloy-4

Metal matrix composites have been considered promising candidates as nuclear fuels for pressurized water reactors and also for nuclear waste management. Among others, Zircaloy is considered an excellent alternative for metallic matrix in such composites due to its excellent mechanical properties, high thermal conductivity and high corrosion resistance at operating temperatures. For manufacturing these fuels, a necessary step is the production of Zircaloy powder to be used as raw material. A feasible route to produce powders of refractory metals and alloys like Zircaloy is the hydriding and dehydriding process. For this type of processing route, hydrogen absorption and desorption should be performed at the lowest temperature and pressure possible in order to reduce the processing costs. In this paper, we investigated the hydrogen sorption kinetics of Zircaloy and the effect of cold rolling on the reaction rate. It was found that cold rolling greatly increases the hydrogenation kinetics and drastically reduces the dehydrogenation temperature.