Membrane recovery of hydrogen from gaseous mixtures of biogenic and technogenic origin

• Typical compositions of microbiological and pyrolysis H2-containing mixtures are considered.
• Properties of polymeric membranes are estimated for separation of multicomponent gas mixtures.
• Biohydrogen purification by membrane contactors is considered.
• Membrane/PSA separation system for H2 recovery from industrial exhaust gas mixtures is suggested.

The development of energy effective processes, intensification of chemical and petroleum refining industries, solution of environmental tasks are related with hydrogen. Introductory parts of review are focused on particularity of H2 generation from biomass (microbiological routes and pyrolysis) and introducing with main industrial hydrogen-containing gaseous mixtures as technogenic sources. Membrane gas separation processes as lower energy consuming ones for H2 recovery from gaseous sources which are as rule multicomponent gas mixtures are considered in this paper including: (1) estimation of unknown gas permeance of commercial and lab-scale polymeric membranes for such components as CO2, CO, N2, CH4, H2S and calculation of standard membrane processes for H2 recovery from multicomponent mixtures; (2) modeling of hydrogen recovery from H2/CO2 mixtures by gas–liquid membrane contactors with non-porous polymeric membranes; (3) theoretical and experimental results of hydrogen recovery from gaseous mixtures of technogenic and biogenic origin by combined membrane/PSA systems. It is shown that H2 recovery can be successfully realized as combination of standard membrane method (H2 preconcentrating) and PSA (H2 conditioning). Improving of whole process requires the development of highly selective membranes.