Experimental Evaluation for the Catalytic Effect of Nickel in Micron Size on Magnesium Hydride

Magnesium hydride is well known as the ideal candidate for solid-state hydrogen storage and thermochemical thermal storage since both gravimetric and volumetric storage are considerably high. The main drawbacks of magnesium hydride are thermodynamic unfavorable and poor kinetic. Adding Nickel as a catalyst, which mainly incorporates mechanical modification (alloying or particle size reduction), can accelerate the reaction rate and decrease the enthalpy formation. It is hard to determine the catalytic of Nickel in magnesium hydride for the kinetic rate improvement. This study is focused on the observation of the effect of Nickel on magnesium hydride by using the market size availability of magnesium and nickel powder (74 μm for Mg and 63 μm for Ni). Mg and Ni are mixed by Ni variation (weight %) from 14%, 15%, and 16%. The characterization starts with initial hydrogenation and dehydrogenation, continues with activation and PCI measurement to obtain the kinetic characteristic of each sample. From this study, it is clear that the increase in nickel ratio will improve the rate of reaction for magnesium hydride, where the maximum storage for magnesium hydride is 4.2% by adding 16 wt% nickel.