A physico-chemical study of an NH3BH3-based reactive composition for hydrogen generation

In order to reduce the use of fossil energies, the development of new technologies, such as those concerning fuel cells, is required. However, fuel cells currently involve issues of storing and generating hydrogen. Borohydride materials, like ammonia borane (NH3BH3), seem to present an interesting solution to these problems. In fact, NH3BH3 contains 19.6 wt.% of hydrogen, of which a high percentage can easily be released by moderate heating. Understanding and controlling the behaviour of ammonia borane would allow the development of a safe, lightweight and compact hydrogen storage system. The final purpose would consist in having a device that is able to be integrated in nomad applications such as GSM, PDA; or in thermal accumulators. The present study reports on thermal decompositions of ammonia borane doped with various percentages of NH4NO3. Differential scanning calorimetry (DSC) permitted an understanding of the thermal behaviour of the material, and the detection of released hydrogen was examined by evolved gas analysis on a thermo-gravimetric analyser (TGA) coupled to a mass spectrometer (MS). Finally, in order to avoid fuel cell malfunctioning due to pollutant gases, an identification of the decomposition products was carried out.