Contact

Alexandra Becker

PhD student
Reactive Transport
a.beckerAthzdr.de
Phone: +49 351 260 4692

Ph.D. projects

Quantitative studies on the H-isotope separation efficiency of novel membrane material

Ph.D. student:

Alexandra Becker

Supervisor:

PD Dr. Cornelius Fischer (HZDR)

Division:

Reactive Transport

Duration:

10/2021–09/2024

This thesis is part of the RTG GRK 2721 HYDROGEN isotopes 1,2,3H, in which the three naturally occurring hydrogen isotopes are investigated. The focus of this project is the separation of tritium from gaseous hydrogen mixtures. Two different approaches, already established for deuterium, will be investigated. The first is separation by selective transport through membranes, in particular proton-conducting polymers. Graphene will be used to increase the separation factor. The second method uses selective adsorption and desorption on nanoporous materials (e.g. zeolites, MOFs) by thermal desorption spectroscopy (TDS). In addition, the effect of the radiation from tritium decay on the structures of graphene and zeolites will be studied using various analytical methods (e.g. Raman, X-ray diffraction (XRD)). Since the handling and analysis of tritium and tritium-containing samples pose specific challenges, microfluidic approaches for tritium quantification will be explored.