Hydrogen in Important and Functional Minerals

宇宙中最常见的元素是氢，它存在于许多对人类有用的材料中。这包括许多有用的无机材料和矿物；例如，沸石用于干燥气体，制造低酒精啤酒，生产汽油和离子交换应用（例如在洗涤剂和从废物中去除重金属）。许多建筑材料——主要来源于天然矿物质——在加工和应用过程中也涉及到水（地球上最常见的含氢化合物）。例如，水泥的形成是一个涉及水的复杂反应，石膏板（石膏）是一种水合物，天然粘土在陶瓷生产过程中脱水。氢在矿物学和环境化学的许多领域也起着重要作用；例如，许多天然金属矿石是氢氧化物和水合物，许多金属的腐蚀产物，如铁锈、氧化铀水合物也是如此。直到最近，科学家们还没有一种可靠和易于应用的方法来发现氢原子在许多这些化合物和矿物质中的位置；这个项目的目的是使用一种新开发的方法来做到这一点。我们打算通过使用一种独特的非常轻的氢原子探针来做到这一点——这是通过从材料中散射一束中子来实现的。通常情况下，这种中子散射对于含氢化合物来说是非常糟糕的，但通过使用非常高的中子数，并应用收集和分析数据的复杂方法，我们将能够实现我们的目标。因此，我们将能够找到氢原子在许多重要的化学物质和矿物中的位置，这反过来将使我们更好地了解它们的性质和环境特征。

The most common element in the universe is hydrogen and it is found in numerous materials of use to mankind. This includes many useful inorganic materials and minerals; for example zeolites that are used dry gases, make low alcohol beer, produce petrol and in ion exchange applications ( for example in detergents and heavy metal removal from wastes). Many building materials - which are mainly derived from natural minerals- also involve water ( the most common hydrogen containing compound on earth) in their processes and application. So for example the formation of cements is a complex reaction involving water, plasterboard ( gypsum) is a hydrate and natural clays are dehydrated during the production of ceramics. Hydrogen also plays an important role in many areas of mineralogy and environmental chemistry; example include the fact that many natural metal ores are hydroxides and hydrates as are the corrosion products of many metals e.g. rust, uranium oxide hydratesUntil recently scientists did not have a reliable and easily-applied method of finding where the hydrogen atoms are in many of these compounds and minerals; the aim of this project is to use a newly develop method to do this. We intend to do this by using a unique probe of the very light hydrogen atom - which is through scattering a beam of neutrons from the material. Normally such neutron scattering is very poor for hydrogen containing compounds but by using very high numbers of neutrons and applying sophisticated methods of collecting and analysing the data we will be able to achieve our goal. We will thus be able to find where the hydrogen atoms are in many important chemicals and minerals and this will in turn lead to an a better understanding of their properties and environmental features.