High-Performance Palladium Based Membrane for Hydrogen Separation and Purification

The mission of the DOE's Fuel Cell Technologies'Hydrogen Fuels R&D effort is to research, develop, and validate technologies for producing, storing, and delivering hydrogen in an efficient, clean, safe, reliable, and affordable manner. A key program technical milestone for hydrogen technology readiness is to produce hydrogen from diverse, domestic resources at $2.00-$3.00 per gallon of gasoline equivalent (gge) delivered, untaxed. Low-cost, high-temperature hydrogen separation membranes represent a key enabling technology for small-scale distributed hydrogen production units. Availability of such membranes with high selectivity and high permeability for hydrogen will allow their integration with hydrocarbon reforming and water gas shift reactions, potentially reducing the cost of hydrogen produced. Pd-metal-based dense membranes are known for their excellent hydrogen selectivity and permeability characteristics, however, utilization of these membranes has so far been limited to small scale niche markets for hydrogen purification primarily due to the relatively high cost of Pd-alloy tubes compared to pressure swing adsorption (PSA) units. This project was aimed at development of thin-film Pd-alloy membranes deposited on Pall Corporation's DOE-based AccuSep® porous metal tube substrates to form a composite hydrogen separation membrane for these applications. Pall's composite membrane development addressed the typical limitations of composite structures by developing robust membranes capable of withstanding thermal and mechanical stresses resulting from high temperature (400C), high pressure (400 psi steam methane reformer and 1000 psi coal) operations and thermal cycling involved in conventional hydrogen production. In addition, the Pd-alloy membrane composition was optimized to be able to offer the most stability in the typical synthesis gas environments produced by reforming of natural gas and bio-derived liquid fuels (BILI) validating the technical effectiveness and economic feasibility of the technology demonstrated. Results from this research added technology and product design information that offers the potential to significantly advance the commercial viability of hydrogen production.