"Smart" glass based sealants for "green" energy created in Russia

 Moscow, 23 Aug - RIA Novosti. Unique glass sealants for the production of highly efficient and environmentally friendly energy sources are developing specialists of Vyatka State University (VyatSU). According to scientists, the technology proposed by them exceeds foreign counterparts by using 3D printing.

Glass sealants - materials in demand in a number of high-tech areas due to their high chemical stability and opportunity to easily manage their composition and properties. Like any glass, these materials are distinguished by the absence of a crystal lattice, which allows them to soften without melting and provide reliable compounds in places that require absolute tightness.

The most promising scope of glass sealants, as scientists explained, production of solid oxide fuel cells (SOFC). The advantages of such devices transforming chemical energy into electric - mobility, high environmental friendliness and a very high efficiency - up to 70 percent. At the same time, almost any type of fuel is suitable for SOFC: hydrogen, gaseous hydrocarbons, ammonia, biogas and others.

Glass sealants are used to connect single elements of the SOFC in a full-featured battery. The working temperature of such elements can reach 900 degrees celsius. To withstand this load, while maintaining the necessary properties, glass of special composition is used, scientists explained. According to them, industrial technologies for the production of such sealants are now actively created all over the world.

Specialists of Vyatka State University have developed a material that is capable of working for several tens of thousands of hours in a SOFC unit, which allows domestic glass sealant to compete with foreign analogues.

Works of the scientific team on this topic are published in Ceramics International magazines, inorganic synthesis and industrial inorganic chemistry and magazine physics: conference-series.

Perfect compounds

The key point when assembling SOFC into a battery is the achievement of absolute tightness of all compounds. Even a microscopic opening in the sealant will lead to the failure of the entire battery, scientists explained .

    Weak place in the production of SOFC-based devices - high-quality of joining together single elements. The devices of this type have a great future, and without our materials, the development and implementation of this technology is simply impossible -

Senior Researcher of the Center for Competenitions "Polymer Materials" Vyatgu Nailo Sayetova told.

The solution to the problem of rapid and reliable assembly of batteries - fluid cells, first proposed by the specialists of Vyatka State University, is the use of special polymer additives and 3D printing for the manufacturing of parts from glass based sealants. Such an approach not only allows to obtain products of the exact form, but also makes it possible to control their behavior in the process of assembling the SOFC batteries. Also, the volume of production waste and the cost of devices is significantly reduced, scientists noted.

Glass isolation

    Our materials have already been checked in the manufacture of real devices. The research results caused great interest from foreign colleagues, as well as manufacturers of electrochemical energy generators -

told the head of the department of technology of inorganic substances and electrochemical production of VyatSU, Anton Kuzmin.

The new sealant, according to the creators, is distinguished by stability in contact with other materials of the SOFC and a low tendency to crystallization, which provides a long service life of the device. Another feature is new materials - the ability to use them when creating SOFC of any geometry (planar, tubular, block).

In the future, the scientific team intends to continue the search for the effective composition of the sealant and adapt the 3D printing method for the serial production of glasspolymers.

Works are carried out with the support of, among others, the Russian Scientific Fund. A project to develop new materials based on glass, uniting the specialists of the Vyatka State University and scientists of the Academic Institutions of Novosibirsk and Yekaterinburg, manages a corresponding member of the RAS A.P. Nemudriy, director of the Institute of Solid Change Chemistry and Mechanochemistry of the Siberian Branch of the Russian Academy of Sciences. The industrial partner of the project is CJSC "Scientific Research Center" Topaz ".

Students of Vyatka State University are actively involved in research in this area, studying in the magistracy in the direction of "Technology and processing of polymers and composites" and "technology of electrochemical processes and corrosion protection".

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First source - RIA Novosti