High sample through-put, variable atmosphere thermogravimetric (TGA) / differential thermal (DTA) analyzer for materials development for energy delivery and storage applications

在石油和天然气储量不断枯竭、对温室气体排放的担忧以及对空气质量的日益关注的当前时代，迫切需要开发新的储存和输送能源的手段。燃料电池可以通过高效、清洁地将燃料转化为电能来满足这一需求，而电池和氢气存储设备可以为交通应用储存能量。然而，这些新技术仍然需要进一步开发，因为它们的储能能力仍然太小，成本太高，而且就燃料电池而言，它们的耐用性仍然需要提高。为了处理直接影响这些技术商业化的材料问题，卡尔加里大学建立了一个世界级的设施。作为该设施的一部分，Thangadurai、BISS、Shimizu和Khan研究小组在固体氧化物燃料电池(SOFC)、聚合物电解质膜(PEM)燃料电池、锂离子电池、储氢材料和扩散焊接技术领域取得了重大进展。进一步的进展需要提高大量的结构化催化剂、陶瓷、金属-有机骨架和金属的性能。这需要对催化剂、陶瓷、金属和有机成分的各种组合进行快速评估，以实现最佳性能。可变气氛热重(TGA)/差热(DTA)分析是实现这些目标并允许优化材料合成和组分之间的高温兼容性以及监控其与气体环境的反应性的理想仪器。这项技术可以探测到质量和热量随温度和气体大气的微小变化。虽然这里确实存在两台这样的仪器，但其中一台已有11年历史，已是最后一条腿，另一台仅用于高度专业化的实验。然而，这大大减少了学生的培训，而其他人在远处所做的分析也不会给出同样高质量的研究。因此，我们要求TGA/DTA相结合，这将直接补充我们能源输送和存储材料制造/测试设施中的现有基础设施。

In the current era of ever depleting oil and natural gas reserves, concerns regarding greenhouse gas emissions and increasing attention to air quality, there is an urgent need to develop new means of storing and delivering energy. Fuel cells can meet this demand by efficiently and cleanly converting fuels to electricity, while batteries and hydrogen gas storage devices can store energy for transportation applications. These new technologies, however, still require further development because their capacity to store energy is still too small, their cost too high, and in the case of fuel cells, their durability still requires improvement. In order to deal with materials issues that directly impact on commercialization of these technologies, a world class facility has been established at the University of Calgary. As part of this facility, the Thangadurai, Birss, Shimizu, and Khan research groups have developed significant advances in the areas of solid oxide fuel cell (SOFC), polymer electrolyte membrane (PEM) fuel cell, lithium ion batteries, hydrogen storage materials, and diffusion bonding techniques. Further advances require enhancing the performance of a vast array of structured catalysts, ceramics, metal-organic frameworks, and metals. This requires the rapid assessment of various combinations of catalyst, ceramic, metal, and organic components in order to achieve the best performance. An ideal instrument to serve these goals and allow optimization of materials synthesis and high temperature compatibility between components, as well as monitoring of their reactivity with a gas environment, is variable atmosphere thermogravimetric (TGA) / differential thermal (DTA) analysis. This technique detects minute changes in mass and heat as a function of temperature and gas atmosphere. While two of these instruments do exist here, one is 11 years old and on its last legs and the second is of use only for highly specialized experiments. However, this substantially diminishes student training and the analyses done by others at a distance will not give the same quality of research. Therefore, we are requesting a combined TGA/DTA which will directly complement the existing infrastructure within our energy delivery and storage materials fabrication/testing facility.