Rabya Aslam and Karsten Muller
Liquid organic hydrogen carriers (LOHC) are an interesting option for chemical energy storage and hydrogen transportation. Dibenzyltoluene (H0-DBT), heat transfer oil, is capable of reversibly storing hydrogen emerged as a feasible LOHC system. However, it is not available as a pure compound but consists of an isomeric mixture of 6 to 8 compounds. During the hydrogen storage process a high number of stable intermediate species is formed. These compounds can be categorized into four main classes according to their degree of hydrogenation. To implement H0- DBT as a LOHC system, thermophysical data of these intermediate compounds are required. In our previous work, a reversed phase HPLC method was developed using phenylhexyl silica stationary phase and acetone/water as eluent to separate these partially hydrogenated fractions with a purity >98%. For further designing a batch or continuous HPLC process, adsorption isotherm data are required. In this work, adsorption isotherms for dibenzyltoluene and its partial and fully hydrogenated forms namely hexahydro-dibenzyltoluene, dodecahydro-dibenzyltoluene, and octadecahydrodibenzyltoluene are measured over phenylhexyl silica in acetone/water solvent using the static method. Sip’s equation (Combined Langmuir-Freundlich isotherm) fits the data better as compared to simple Freundlich, Langmuir or competitive Langmuir adsorption isotherms.