H2 production via water gas shift in a composite Pd membrane reactor prepared by the pore-plating method

• A 10.2 μm fully dense Pd layer was prepared over oxidized-PSS by ELP pore-plating.
• H2 permeance of 0.66–3.96·10−4 mol/s m2 Pa0.5 and complete hydrogen selectivity.
• Depletion in H2 flux with gaseous mixtures, although improve conventional CO effect.
• High stability and integrity of the membrane in permeation tests and WGS-MR.
• Increase the CO conversion in WGS-MR as compared with traditional PBR.

In this work, H2 production via catalytic water gas shift reaction in a composite Pd membrane reactor prepared by the ELP “pore-plating” method has been carried out. A completely dense membrane with a Pd thickness of about 10.2 μm over oxidized porous stainless steel support has been prepared. Firstly, permeation measurements with pure gases (H2 and N2) and mixtures (H2 with N2, CO or CO2) at four different temperatures (ranging from 350 to 450 °C) and trans-membrane pressure differences up to 2.5 bar have been carried out. The hydrogen permeance when feeding pure hydrogen is within the range 2.68–3.96·10−4 mol m−2 s−1 Pa−0.5, while it decreases until 0.66–1.35·10−4 mol m−2 s−1 Pa−0.5 for gas mixtures. Furthermore, the membrane has been also tested in a WGS membrane reactor packed with a commercial oxide Fe–Cr catalyst by using a typical methane reformer outlet (dry basis: 70%H2–18%CO–12%CO2) and a stoichiometric H2O/CO ratio. The performance of the reactor was evaluated in terms of CO conversion at different temperatures (ranging from 350 °C to 400 °C) and trans-membrane pressures (from 2.0 to 3.0 bar), at fixed gas hourly space velocity (GHSV) of 5000 h−1. At these conditions, the membrane maintained its integrity and the membrane reactor was able to achieve up to the 59% of CO conversion as compared with 32% of CO conversion reached with conventional packed-bed reactor at the same operating conditions.