ADVANCED HYDROGEN TRANSPORT MEMBRANES FOR VISION 21 FOSSIL FUEL PLANTS

Eltron Research Inc. and team members CoorsTek, Sued Chemie, and Argonne National Laboratory are developing an environmentally benign, inexpensive, and efficient method for separating hydrogen from gas mixtures produced during industrial processes, such as coal gasification. This project was motivated by the National Energy Technology Laboratory (NETL) Vision 21 initiative, which seeks to economically eliminate environmental concerns associated with the use of fossil fuels. Currently, this project is focusing on four basic categories of dense membranes: (i) mixed conducting ceramic/ceramic composites, (ii) mixed conducting ceramic/metal (cermet) composites, (iii) cermets with hydrogen permeable metals, and (iv) hydrogen permeable alloys. Ultimately, these materials must enable hydrogen separation at practical rates under ambient and high-pressure conditions, without deactivation in the presence of feedstream components such as carbon dioxide, water, and sulfur. This report describes resent results for long-term hydrogen permeation and chemical stability measurements, new mixed conducting cermets, progress in cermet, thin film, and thin-walled tube fabrication, hydrogen absorption measurements for selected compositions, and membrane facilitated alkane to olefin conversion