Zinc Nanopowder Preparation by Zinc Oxide Reaction with Natural Gas

The production of nano zinc powder was investigated in this article. We report on a novel combined process for the efficient production of zinc. The procedure of synthesis is the combination of reforming process of natural gas and reducing of zinc oxide in a single unit. This phenomenon involves the reduction of zinc oxide by natural gas as a reducing agent for production of zinc vapors. Then the condensation of solid particles occurs on a low temperature copper substrate which is placed at the end of the tube furnace; zinc particles of 57.9nm average crystallite size were formed. The resulting Zn particles were analyzed by different characterization methods such as X-ray diffractometry, scanning electron microscopy (SEM) and laser particle size analyzer. By using of taguchi method, effect of parameters on average particle size of samples was investigated.

Keywords:

zinc powder , nano crystallites , reduction , characterization