MEPhI: Industrial hydrogen sensor

2025: Hydrogen Sensor Presentation

The MEPhI has developed a hydrogen sensor. The university announced this on February 24, 2025.

Hydrogen is an extremely combustible and explosive gas; therefore, in all processes where it is used or may be formed, monitoring of its content in water or air is necessary. A group of employees and students of the Institute of Laser and Plasma Technologies of NRNU MEPhI has developed an original industrial hydrogen sensor capable of operating at high temperatures (from 150 to 450 degrees Celsius), characteristic of many technological processes in the power, chemical industry and metallurgy.

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Фото: MEPhI

According to Aleksei Solovyov, head of the development team, senior lecturer at the Institute of Laser and Plasma Technologies at NRNU MEPhI, such sensors can be useful at nuclear power plants, in which water often circulates at very high temperatures (over 300 degrees), which can cause its partial dissociation with the formation of hydrogen bubbles. These bubbles can provoke microbursts and destroy the walls of pipelines. There is also a danger of hydrogen release in the oil refining and petrochemical industries. At the same time, hydrogen is widely used for the production of ammonia on the basis of which nitrogen fertilizers are created. All this causes the need to control the hydrogen content directly within the framework of technological processes.

The MEP sensor is based on a composite material comprising a silicon carbide substrate on which a thin tungsten oxide film is sprayed. When interacting with hydrogen in tungsten oxide, electrophysical properties change. By measuring the electrical resistance of this composite, one can draw conclusions about the presence of hydrogen in the environment.

The developed technology for February 2025 has already been patented and tested in the laboratories of MEPhI.

It is planned that in the summer of 2025 the device will be tested in conditions of increased hydrogen content at the MIPT landfill.

In parallel, another hydrogen sensor is being developed, capable of operating at even higher temperatures (from 450 to 850 degrees), and working on other physical sights. The basis of the second sensor will be a sapphire substrate with sputtered zones of different metals and alloys (presumably gold, platinum and nickel oxide). Since these elements have different catalytic activity at such temperatures, when interacting with hydrogen, different electrical potential accumulates on them. The hydrogen level in the medium will be determined by measuring the potential difference between the two materials (e.g. platinum and gold). First of all, the high-temperature sensor is intended for metallurgical production of ROSATOM State Corporation. As of February 2025, the technology of the second sensor is undergoing patenting.