(311e) Adsorptive Membrane and Adsorbent/membrane Hybrid Processes for Hydrogen Separation

Hydrogen is widely used in various fields of industries, such as chemical, steel, oil refining and petro-chemical industries and is also expected as a clean alternative energy source, anticipating enormous demand for hydrogen in the near future. In addition, application of inorganic membranes to practical gas separation has attracted much attention since there is an increasing demand for separation and purification of gases under harsh conditions.

In this study, the transport mechanisms of the MTES (methyltriethoxysilane) templating silica/Ą-alumina composite membrane were evaluated by using CO2, N2, CH4, CO and H2 single gaes and their hydrogen binary systems. And the separation characteristics and dynamics of hydrogen mixture produced from natural gas reformer (H2/CH4/CO/CO2: 69/3/2/26 vol.%) were studied on both experimentally and theoretically. In addition, AMH(Adsorbent/Membrane Hybrid) system, which adsorbents (zeolite 5A) were packed to the MTES membrane, was developed to improve the performance of hydrogen separation in binary gas mixtures(H2/CH4, H2/N2 and H2/CO). Since the permeation flux in the MTES membrane was affected by molecular sieving effects as well as surface diffusion by adsorption, the kinetic and equilibrium separation should be considered simultaneously in the membrane according to molecular properties. The transient permeation/separation behaviours of hydrogen multi-component systems on the MTES membrane were predicted by the Generalized Maxwell-Stefan model incorporating the dusty gas model and Langmuir isotherm model.