Pd Alloy Membranes for Hydrogen Separation from Coal-Derived Syngas

Abstract : TDA Research Inc., in collaboration with Colorado School of Mines (CSM) is developing a sulfur and CO-tolerant membrane to produce the clean hydrogen from syngas using Pd membrane films prepared on a variety of supports (e.g. symmetric ceramic supports and porous stainless steel supports). This paper summarizes the results of the membrane development and test efforts. Membranes that showed superior properties in screening tests using hydrogen/nitrogen mixtures were further evaluated under representative conditions. In general, membranes showed very good stability in water gas shift environmental and were tested for several days with stable permeance and selectivity. We examined the effect of operating parameters including temperature, pressure and H2 recovery on membrane performance. We also investigated the impact of CO, CO2 and H2S concentration in the reformate gas on the H2 permeation and selectivity of the membrane.