Boron Nitrade Powder
'Eureka moment' as Australian researchers make hydrogen storage breakthrough.. A team from Deakin University’s Institute for Frontier Materials (IFM) in Melbourne says it has found a new mechanochemical way of separating and storing gases, which is safe, uses a tiny fraction of the energy compared to traditional methods and creates zero waste.
The hero ingredient in the breakthrough is boron nitride powder, which is has a knack for absorbing substances, being small, but with a large amount of surface area. It’s also classed as a “level-0 chemical,” something that is deemed perfectly safe to have in your house.
The researchers put boron nitride powder into a ball mill – a type of grinder containing small stainless-steel balls in a chamber – along with the gases that need to be separated.
As the chamber rotates at a higher and higher speed, the balls collide with the powder and the wall of the chamber triggers a mechanochemical reaction resulting in gas being absorbed into the powder.
One type of gas is absorbed quicker, separating it out from the others, and allowing it to be easily removed from the mill. The process can be repeated over several stages to separate the gases one by one.
All up, the process consumes 76.8 KJ/s to store and separate 1000L of gases, which means it uses at least 90 per cent less than the current gas separation process commonly used in the petroluem industry...
Even more significantly, once the gas is absorbed into the powder it gas can be transported safely and easily. When the gas is needed, the powder can be simply heated in a vacuum to release the gas unchanged...
[The team shows] there’s mechanochemical alternative, using ball milling to store gas in the nanomaterial at room temperature. It doesn’t require high pressure or low temperatures, so it would offer a much cheaper and safer way to develop things like hydrogen powered vehicles.
The next step for the IFM team is to gather industry support and scale the process up to a full pilot. A provisional patent application has been submitted for the process"