Hydrogen release reaction from sodium hydride with different sample quantities

Doi, Daisuke  

In sodium-cooled fast reactors (SFRs), hydrogen is a major nonmetallic impurity in the coolant during normal operation. A higher hydrogen concentration than the gas-liquid equilibrium had been transiently detected in the gas space of the actual SFR plant. However, the chemical reactions that caused hydrogen generation, which involve several sodium compounds, have not been identified. Furthermore, the thermal behavior of these hydrogen release reactions has not been thoroughly investigated. In this study, the hydrogen release behavior of sodium hydride, which could be involved in all of these reactions, was clarified by two experimental methods dealing with different sample quantities. In the thermal analysis with a semi-micro sample of about 1mmol, the hydrogen generation was demonstrated by mass spectrometry as the sample mass decreased, suggesting thermal decomposition. A monomodal hydrogen release curve similar to the thermal analysis result was obtained in the heating experiment with a macro amount sample of about 1mol. These experimental results showed consistent activation energies within the standard error. Therefore, it was elucidated that the ideal reaction behavior obtained by thermal analysis could be sufficiently extrapolated to the reaction behavior occurring in a larger amount of sample. These findings provide fundamental insights into the thermal decomposition of sodium hydride and are indispensable for analyzing hydrogen release behavior in other hydrogen release reactions involving sodium hydride.