Hydrogen production from solid sodium borohydride

A system for a controlled production of hydrogen from solid NaBH4 has been designed and built. Cartridges of catalysed or non-catalysed NaBH4 in powder form are fed by water or catalyst solution into a reactor; the reaction is started and tuned by controlling the input water (or water/catalyst solution) flow. We designed, built and tested different reactor layouts and geometries. Tests have been carried out in order to monitor operative parameters (i.e., water flow, reactor temperature) and to evaluate their influence on hydrolysis performance. The facility allows hydrogen flow in the 5–30 L/h range for several hours. The paper reports on the experimental runs and on the main achieved goals.