Hydrogen sorption of Mg-based mixtures elaborated by reactive mechanical grinding

The use of mechanical grinding (MG) under H-2 of magnesium powder improves the hydrogen sorption properties. The hydrogenation of Mg starts in situ during the milling process that allows suppressing the activation procedure generally requested for Mg. The effects of the addition of various elements or compounds have been studied. The hydriding is a two-step process: nucleation and diffusion. A direct relationship exists between the nucleation duration and the specific surface. A critical milling time exists below which the diffusion process is improved and above which no further improvement is observed (the maximum internal stress in the powder is also reached at this critical time). The diffusion is controlled by the number of crystallites per particle that can be reduced by increasing the milling time up to 10 h. The addition of Co (catalyst), YNi (hydrogen pump) or oxides (abrasive element and nucleation centre) leads to an improvement of the hydrogen sorption properties (but a strong dependence upon the milling time is reported). Finally, the sorption properties of our mixtures are comparable with thus reported for MgH2-metal mixtures. (C) 2002 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.