Development of Membrane Technology for Highly-efficient Hydrogen Production

A membrane reformer can perform steam reforming reaction and hydrogen separation processes simultaneously, without shift converters and purification systems. The challenges to be pursued toward commercialization of this technology are further improvement of the system efficiency and durability of the membrane modules as well as significant cost reduction for manufacturing membrane modules. For this purpose, a new 3-year project to develop membrane technologies for highly-efficient hydrogen production has been launched under the NEDO's hydrogen program. For the system engineering, a 40 Nm 3 /h-class membrane reformer with hydrogen production energy efficiency of 80% and the product hydrogen purity of over 99.99% is going to be developed. For the membrane modules using palladium alloys, durability is going to be improved to enable operation of the modules for 10,000 hours or more. A new type of module that has palladium alloy film prepared on the surface of structured catalyst is going to be developed to reduce the manufacturing cost and make a more compact reactor. For the membrane modules using non-palladium alloys, three types of membrane materials will be developed to greatly reduce the module cost.