Hydrogen inhibition in wet dust removal systems by using L-aspartic: A feasible way of hydrogen explosion control measures

Abstract Alloy dust generated from automobile wheel hub grinding, after entering the wet dust collector, will react with water to produce hydrogen, thus exposing the entire ventilation and dust removal system to potential hydrogen explosion. In this paper, the inhibition mechanism and kinetic characteristics of different concentrations of L-Aspartic acid (L-Asp) on the reaction of Al0.9Mg0.1 alloy with water were studied with respect to adsorption morphology, chemical kinetic modeling and molecular dynamics (MD), using L-Asp as the environmentally-safe hydrogen inhibitor. The results show that within a given temperature interval, the hydrogen production rate of Al0.9Mg0.1 alloy dust decreases with increasing L-Asp concentration. When the L-Asp concentration exceeds 1.0g/L, the hydrogen evolution rate is almost zero. The calculated results of chemical kinetics agree with the Langmuir adsorption model, confirming that L-Asp is an ideal monolayer physical adsorption system on the surface of alloy particles. The FTIR and MD simulation results show that –NH2 and –COOH groups in L-Asp molecules contribute greatly to the adsorption. The research results of this paper can help fundamentally avoid hydrogen generation in wet dust collectors and guarantee intrinsic safety.