Hydrogen selective membranes by assembly of anisotropic nanoparticles

At least 80% reduction of CO₂ emissions from IGCC coal-fuelled power plants can be accomplished by incorporating a WGS membrane reactor technology, resulting in residual carbon dioxide emissions of 0.1 Kg CO₂/kw-hr. A scalable membrane fabrication technique that can reliably produce thousands square meters of hydrogen selective membrane is desirable. A discussion covers results from a simple novel method for the fabrication of H₂-selective silica membranes; use of silicate tiles as building blocks for the formation of extremely thin, H₂-selective, highly ordered SiO₂ coatings; molecular sieve particles with plate-like morphology; deposition processes that lead to uniform, high-coverage coatings of molecular sieve particles on porous supports; and membranes with high hydrogen selectivity. This is an abstract of a paper presented at the 41st Annual Loss Prevention Symposium (Houston, TX 4/22-26/2007).