This project develops a canister to store hydrogen safely for an automobile application. The canister needs to be able to hold some solid powder metal hydride to which hydrogen will bond and de-bond in order to store it. The canister needs to be able to distribute the hydrogen throughout the powder and evenly disperse heat to the powder for the de-bonding process. The canister should be designed such that it is compatible with various types of hydride powders.

The concept for the overall system is when the canister is connected to a hydrogen source it will fill with and store hydrogen safely. When disconnected, it can be placed in a fuel cell-based automobile and provide fuel to drive the vehicle a reasonable distance. Additional components to be considered in order to better understand the system as a whole are the solar panel as a power source, water electrolyzer to produce hydrogen, fuel cell, and heat exchanger or heat pump for transferring heat from the fuel cell to the canister to de-bond the hydrogen in the car.

The physics of plasma actuator dielectric barrier discharge (DBD) devices are currently the subject of research at AFRL and other institutions. DBDs are being investigated for use in aerodynamic flow control applications. The work at AFRL focuses on mean and time-resolved measurements of the DBD characteristics. A fundamental parameter for describing the discharges is the current-voltage characteristic of the discharge. These data are needed to determine the mean and peak power into the discharge and the time-history of the current and voltage for phase-averaged measurements.

For this investigation, a circuit was constructed to enable measurement of voltage and current in certain portions of the circuit. From these measurements, the voltage and current values across the discharge could be determined using conversion factors related to the circuit components. The peak voltage and current levels are found for DBD discharges generated using a function generator and an amplifier. Measurements for the discharge were taken with the discharge running at varying amplitudes and varying frequencies between 1 and 20 kHz for sine and square waves. Using an oscilloscope and Microsoft Excel, plots have been obtained for single waveforms and an average of multiple waveforms for voltage, current, and power across the discharge. From the averaged waveform data, peak and average running power characteristics are investigated.