Conversion of super water absorption beads to value added chloride anion absorbents

• Main Author: Wong, Kang Cheng
• Other Authors: Chan Siew Hwa
• Format: Final Year Project
• Language: English
• Published: 2016
• Subjects: DRNTU::Engineering
• Online Access: http://hdl.handle.net/10356/67283
• Institution: Nanyang Technological University

Fuel cells are devices that have the capability of converting chemical energy from a fuel to electricity efficiently. Out of the many fuel cells available, PEMFCs, which use pure hydrogen as fuel, have been considered as an exceptional power source. High concentration hydrogen can be found in the by-product of the chlor-alkali industry. However, this hydrogen contains impurities. It seems that little to no research has been done to remove the impurities in the hydrogen released from the chlor-alkali industry. It has been proven that some of the impurities that can be found in this hydrogen, in particular, chlorine and chloride, have negative effects on PEMFCs. Thus, more studies should be done to remove the chlorine and chloride. The objective of this project is to fabricate C-PAM beads using the gel-casting technique for use as an absorbent and to determine the chloride anion removal efficiency of the C-PAM beads. The simulated chloride removal testing was conducted to determine the chloride anion removal efficiency and the saturation time of the C-PAM beads. The effect of the concentration of the crosslinker on the water, NaOH and HCI solution absorption efficiency of the C-PAM beads was investigated. FTIR spectroscopy analysis was used to determine if there are changes in the functional groups and investigate the stability of the functional group of the C-PAM beads after absorbing NaOH and HCl solutions. The C-PAM beads were successfully fabricated using the gel-casting method. The results of the simulated chloride removal testing have shown that the C-PAM beads were able to absorb chloride anions and the chloride anion removal efficiency was calculated to be 0.11422gHCl/gC-PAM. The time taken for the C-PAM beads to reach saturation was 17 hours. It was determined that the crosslinker concentration decreases, the water, NaOH and HCI absorption efficiency of the C-PAM beads increases. The results from the FTIR spectroscopy analysis showed that there was no change in the functional groups of the C-PAM beads before and after HCI and NaOH absorption.