Construction of a para-ortho hydrogen test cryostat

Abstract

In a prospective hydrogen economy it is necessary to verify the para concentration of the employed hydrogen. In case of a short storage time of about a few days only it has been shown that a partial conversion into para-hydrogen gives an optimized overall efficiency. Hence, an easy and reliable method of measuring the para-hydrogen concentration is needed. In this paper, the concept and construction of a small test cryostat are described and first results are presented. The measuring principle is based on a catalytic induced adiabatic ortho-para conversion of a hydrogen gas flow starting from a known temperature. The operation of the system only requires a certain amount of liquid nitrogen as coolant. To determine the concentration of para-hydrogen it is only necessary to measure the temperature of the gas before and after the adiabatic catalyst cell. The measuring cryostat is used for further investigation of the spontaneous para-ortho conversion in the supercritical state. In addition, the design of the cryostat allows the investigation of different catalyst materials regarding the catalytic activity and possible degradation by using a known para concentration for the measurement. © 2010 American Institute of Physics.