Tesla Ventsam

Title of Work:  Analysis of Low-Temperature Hydrogen Plasmas for Carbon-Free Reduction

Abstract:

Metal is used in everyone's everyday life in this day and age, but metal isn't an eternal material; it rusts over time. In the world-wide industry sector, metal rust is reduced using carbon or carbon monoxide, which turns these elements into the gas phases of carbon monoxide and dioxide. This causes about 6% of worldwide greenhouse gas emissions. Having said this, metal oxides can be reduced using carbon-free plasmas that have a byproduct of water instead of any pollutant. I researched methods to reduce iron oxides using a hydrogen-argon plasma to create recyclable materials for the global industry sector. This is achieved using a dual inductively coupled plasma (DICP) chamber, in which the oxides are treated in the hydrogen-argon plasma at a low temperature. My research proves that this method is successful in iron oxides. 

Title of Work (Global Language):  Analyse von Niedertemperatur-Wasserstoffplasmen für die kohlenstofffreie Reduktion

Abstract (Global Language):

Metall wird heutzutage im täglich Leben von allen verwendet, aber Metall ist kein ewiges Material; es rostet mit der Zeit. In der weltweiten Industrie wird Metallrost mit Hilfe von Kohlenstoff oder Kohlenmonoxid reduziert, wodurch diese Elemente in die Gasphasen Kohlenmonoxid und -dioxid übergehen. Dies verurascht etwa 6% der weltweiten Treibhausgasemissionen. Metalloxide können jedoch mit kohlenstofffreien Plasmen reduziert sein, bei senen als Nebenprodukt Wasser und keine Schadstoffe entstehen. Ich habe Methoden zur Reduktion von Eisenoxiden mit Hilfe eines Wasserstoff-Argon-Plasmas erforscht, um recyclische Materialien für den globalen Industriesektor herzustellen. Dazu wird eine duale induktiv gekoppelte Plasmakammer (DICP) verwendet, in der die Oxide bei niedriger Temperatur im Wasserstoff-Argon-Plasma behandelt werden. Meine Forschung beweist, dass diese Methode bei Eisenoxiden erfolgreich ist. 

Elevator Pitch Video

Elevator Pitch Transcript: 

Hi! My name is Tesla Ventsam, and I studied the analysis of low temperature, hydrogen plasmas for carbon, free reduction of iron oxides. Trust me, I know it's a mouthful of a title. So I studied in the city of Dortmund, in Germany. I studied at the Technical University of Dortmund, and just for context: I am a mechanical engineering and a German major.

I absolutely loved Dortmund as a city. It's actually one of the greenest cities in Germany, and so it has a lot of just beautiful scenery everywhere you go. There's trees, there's parks. The architecture itself is beautiful. Dortmund is an absolutely fantastic city, and I would recommend it to anybody that's planning on going to Germany, especially engineering majors, because the technical university has a lot of really really good connections and it just has so many good opportunities. It is a great place to go study. But what I actually studied, to get a little bit into that, is with the iron reductions and whatnot. The industry sector in which iron productions as of 2019 was responsible for about 24% of global greenhouse gas emissions.

In metal reductions, that's responsible for like 25% of the industry sector of the world which makes metal reductions responsible for 6% of global greenhouse gas emissions. This is because it is done using either carbon or carbon monoxide. And in using this carbon carbon monoxide we have byproducts of carbon monoxide or carbon dioxide, which are the greatest contributors to these greenhouse gas emissions.

The thing about metal, metal, oxide reductions is it can be done with dihydrogen. And so when it's done with dihydrogen, our only byproduct that we actually have is water. So the sort of gas you see coming out of this plant that's not any sort of Verschmutzing... ah, that's the German word! That's not any sort of like air pollutant that's actually just water going back into our air.

When this is done, though, it's done using a plasma. And what you're seeing here is just a drawing of the plasma chamber that I actually used in my research, and it was so much fun to learn how to use this. When I was working I worked with a mixture of argon gas and hydrogen gas, and with these two combined I was able to create this kind of pinkish gas that you saw on the 1st slide. When this was being used as shown here, this is more of a 3D view of the dual inductive coupled plasma chamber that I used.

You can see that it kind of created this entire gas, that the iron was actually surrounded by, as shown on the right. That is the apparatus that actually held the iron oxide samples that I was working with. The samples themselves would be placed in Section 3 of the sample holder and the shutter on top, which is part one, was just a shutter to close over above, and that helped me control the exact like to the second amount of time that our iron oxides were being handled.

Some of our most interesting findings from this were that when we used more and more percentage of dihydrogen in our, you know, plasma percentages between hydrogen and Argon, we found that we had to use a lower gas temperature to get about the same results, which was very interesting. We did also find that the oxygen percentages of our elements were lowering consistently when we used more and more hydrogen.

Now, in my research, I was only able to get up to about 37% hydrogen. But I would have loved to go further to see what happens if we use 80%, what happens if we use 90 ,100, etc.  If I ever got the opportunity, I would absolutely go back and go and just try this again. I'm really excited to go into further detail with this with the Igp summit, and I'm happy to answer any questions at the summit itself, and I honestly, I just I can't wait to talk to all of y'all.

So I hope you all have a nice evening, and I will see you on November 14th!

Bye.

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