Effect of γ-ray irradiation on the sorption of hydrogen by nanoporous carbon materials

Abstract

The effects of radiation exposure in a hydrogen atmosphere on hydrogen sorption by a synthetic porous carbon nanosorbent, SCN (spherical carbonite saturated). The exposure was created by γ-rays from cobalt-60 (photon energy 1.2 MeV, irradiation dose 4.8 × 107 rad) in a normal hydrogen atmosphere at a pressure of 1 atm and a temperature of 300 K. The processes of hydrogen sorption-desorption by SCN samples before and after irradiation were studied in a temperature interval of 15–1173 K. It was found that the irradiation of SCN in a hydrogen atmosphere significantly increased the amount hydrogen sorbed in the sample. We conducted a comparison with the results of earlier studies investigating the influence of irradiation on the sorption of hydrogen by single-walled carbon nanotubes. The amount of physically sorbed hydrogen in the synthetic SCN sorbent that was irradiated in the hydrogen atmosphere, is four times greater than the amount of hydrogen that was physically sorbed by the single-walled carbon nanotubes that were irradiated under similar conditions. At a temperature below 25 K, the hydrogen diffusion in the SCN was almost temperature independent for the porous subsystem with the highest diffusion coefficients, which is typical for cases when the tunnel diffusion mechanism dominates the thermodynamic mechanism.