Research on hydrogen safety technology utilizing the automotive catalyst

Ono, Hitomi*; Takenaka, Keisuke*; Kita, Tomoaki*; Taniguchi, Masashi*; Matsumura, Daiju   ; Nishihata, Yasuo; Hino, Ryutaro; Reinecke, E.-A.*; Takase, Kazuyuki*; Tanaka, Hirohisa*

Safety management technology of hydrogen gas is extremely important not only for nuclear power generation but also for future society. A brand-new passive autocatalytic recombiner (PAR) system utilizing the monolithic "intelligent catalyst" has been studied for the long-term storage of high-concentration radioactive materials related to the decommissioning of nuclear reactors. The monolith-type automotive catalyst showed high hydrogen conversion activity from a room temperature in a large scale reactor of REKO-4. It became clear that natural convection by reaction is greatly improved by roughening the cell density of the monolith catalyst especially under static environmental conditions such as in a storage container. Taking advantage of this superior catalytic property, we aim to complete the safety technology for storage containers at an early stage and advance the development of highly active catalyst from further low temperature.