Effect of reactive mechanical grinding on chemical and hydrogen sorption properties of the Mg+10 wt.% Co mixture

Reactive 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 addition of Co, which acts as a catalyst for the dissociation of H-2, also leads to an improvement of the hydrogen sorption properties (but a strong dependence upon the milling time is reported). The hydriding is determined to be 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 more 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 which can be decreased by increasing the milling time up to 10 h. However, the sorption properties of Mg-Co mixtures are a little under those reported for MgH2-metal mixtures. (C) 2002 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.