Effect of Ultrasonic Oscillations on the Interaction of al with Ga-In Eutectic Alloy

Abstract

The development of the compact sources of energy (~10 W) has been advancing during the recent years basing on the use of hydrogen fuel cells. One of the methods of obtaining pure hydrogen is the reaction of water with aluminum activated with Ga-In liquid eutectic alloy. The mechanism of aluminum activation by Ga-In (76 wt% Ga, t_m = 15.9 °C) eutectic alloy is based on the diffusion of the eutectic components along the grain boundaries of the original aluminum sample. In this paper, we attempted to use ultrasonic action to improve the efficiency of the diffusion process. It has been shown that the activation of aluminum in the ultrasonic field increased the rate of diffusion along the grain boundaries of the starting material by 2 orders of magnitude. The purpose of the work was to study the nature of the acoustic impact on the interaction between Ga-In eutectics and a massive aluminum sample. The heterogeneity of the structure causes corresponding changes in the velocity and direction of acoustic wave propagation in the sample and accordingly affects its resonance characteristics. The product obtained as a result of activation according to the described technique efficiently interacted with water to release hydrogen.