Carbon Aerogel Activity

Objective:

  • Development of carbon aerogels for various applications like catalyst for hydrogen isotope separation, water desalination, super capacitors and fuel cells.
  • The work on development of catalyst with long-term stability is being pursued for heavy water clean-up in collaboration with HWD-BARC.

Synthesis of Carbon Aerogel (CA):

  • The technology for the synthesis of carbon aerogels and metal loaded carbon aerogels has been developed.
  • Critical point drying method has been replaced by surfactant based open air-drying methods to prepare these aerogels.
  • High surface area carbon aerogels (CA) with surface area up to 2000 m2/g have been synthesized.
  • Various techniques have been developed to prepare carbon aerogels in different morphologies like large flat electrodes, thin film targets etc. for different applications.

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Gel & Pyrolysed carbon aerogel (CA)
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SEM of high surface area CA




Applications:

Click below for further information:

  1. Platinum-loaded carbon aerogel (Pt-CA) for heavy water clean up:

    • Pt-CA with well dispersed nano-sized Pt particles was developed as a catalyst for application in hydrogen isotope separation.  Pt-CA coated hydrophobic Dixon ring catalysts were developed under MOU with Heavy Water Board for bi-thermal hydrogen water exchange process. 
    • This catalyst tested under dynamic conditions for H2-H2O exchange showed volume transfer coefficient of ~ 0.3 s-1 at atmospheric conditions.
    • The catalyst was conditioned for performing under 120 oC at 20 bar for hydrogen isotope production process.
    • Further Pt-CA catalyst is being tested for Heavy water clean-up in collaboration with HWD-BARC

 

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TEM of Pt-CA showing Pt particles
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Pt-CA coated Dixon ring catalyst
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Batch of Pt-CA coated Dixon rings

Publications:

    1. Singh R et al., Development of hydrophobic platinum-doped carbon aerogel catalyst for H – D exchange process at high pressure, Current Science, Vol. 109, no. 10, p. 1860-1864, May. 2015.2.
    2. Rashmi Singh et al. . Synthesis of platinum nanoparticles on carbon aerogel by ambient pressure drying method ,Materials Letter, 64 (2010)843-845.
  1. Conducting carbon aerogel (CA) for capacitive deionization (CDI) application:

    • CA electrodes of size up to 200 x 200 mm have been synthesized for desalination application.
    • Specific capacitance of active electrode material = 80-120 F/g.
    • Salt sorption capacity of active electrode material = 8.4 mg per gram.
    • Multi-electrode desalination unit was made to remove salinity from 1000 ppm to less than 200 ppm with capacity of 500 ml per batch.
    • It was also found useful in removing arsenic from water from 200 ppb to less than 20 ppb.
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Graphite supported large CA electrode
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CDI setup for water desalination
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CDI setup for arsenic removal

Publications:

    1. Kohli D.K et al., Capacitive deionization of ground water using carbon aerogel based electrodes ,Desalination and Water Treatment, Vol. 57, p. 26871-26879, Aug. 2016.
  1. Carbon aerogel (CA) for Supercapacitor:

    • Currently work on development of heterogeneous carbon aerogels is under progress for achieving inherently conducting and wettable carbon materials supercapacitor application.
    • Capacitor cell was tested using N-doped CA and showed capacitance of 495 F at 0.7 V operation with ESR of 1.96 mΩ .
    • This material compares well with commercially available maxwell supercapacitor (ESR: 2.9 mΩ per cell).
    • Development of capacitor module of 5 kJ energy at 12 V operation is in progress.
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Super capacitor cell demonstration
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CV plot of CA & RuO2-CA

Publications:

    1. Singh Ashish et al. Ruthenium doped carbon aerogel with CO2 surface activation for enhanced electrochemical capacitance Current Applied Physics, Vol. 17, no. 6, p. 885-889, Aug. 2017
  1. Pt-loaded carbon aerogel (Pt-CA) for fuel cell:

    • Pt-CA with 20% Pt loading is developed for fuel cell application.
    • A membrane electrode assembly fabricated with the prepared catalyst tested in PEMFCs (H2-O2) single cell showed power density of 536 mWcm-2 at 0.6V at 60°C under atmospheric pressure conditions.
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Pt-CA performance for fuel cell

Publications:

    1. Singh R et al. Facile synthesis of highly conducting and mesoporous carbon aerogel as platinum support for PEM fuel cells International Journal of Hydrogen Energy, Vol. 42, p. 11110-11117, Aug. 2017
  1. Carbon aerogel (CA) for X-ray emission:

  • X-ray emission studies have been conducted at BARC using carbon aerogel targets. The emission in the soft x-ray region was observed to increase to about 1.8 times and 2.3 times in pure and Pt doped carbon aerogel targets respectively with respect to solid carbon target.
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Thin film CA target for laser interaction and SEM of crater formed with 8J, 500 ps laser

Publications:

    1. S. Chaurasia, et al. Laser interaction with low-density carbon foam Pramana: Journal of Physics , Vol. 75, p. 1191-1196, 2010.

 
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