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Summary: INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF ENERGY RESEARCH
Int. J. Energy Res. 2009; 33:481498
Published online 2 December 2008 in Wiley InterScience
(www.interscience.wiley.com). DOI: 10.1002/er.1491
A closed-loop proposal for hydrogen generation using steel waste
and a prototype solar concentrator
Abdul-Majeed AzadÃ,y
, Sathees Kesavan and Sirhan Al-Batty
Department of Chemical Engineering, University of Toledo MS 305, 2801 W. Bancroft St., Toledo, OH 43606-3390, U.S.A.
SUMMARY
An economically viable and environmental-friendly method of generating PEM grade hydrogen has been proposed and
is by the reaction of certain metals with steam, appropriately called `metalsteam reforming'--MSR. The drawbacks of
conventional processes (hydrogen and carbothermic reduction schemes) are overcome by resorting to solution-based
reduction schemes and are made economically feasible using iron oxides from steel industry's mill-scale waste. A novel
aqueous-based room temperature technique using sodium borohydride (NaBH4) as the reducing agent has been
developed that produces highly active nanoscale iron particles ($40 nm). By using hydrazine as an inexpensive and,
compared with NaBH4, more stable reductant, body centered cubic iron particles with $5 nm edges were obtained via
solvothermal process under mild conditions from acid digested mill-scale waste. The nanoscale zerovalent iron (nZVI)
powder showed improved kinetics and greater propensity for hydrogen generation than the coarser microscale iron. The
rate constants for the MSR were obtained for all the reduction schemes employed in this work and are given by
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