Hydrogen Separation Characteristics of SiC Nanoporous Membrane at High Temperature

Abstract

Ceramic membranes having less than 1nm size pores have great potential for gas separation at high temperature due to their good thermal stability. Moreover, nanoporous silicon carbide membrane has potential application under hydrothermal condition at high temperature since it is highly stable at high temperature. In this research, nanoporous SiC membrane has been developed on porous alumina support using preceramic polymer. Pore size of the SiC membrane was controlled using polystylene(PS) as the pore forming agent. The SiC membrane having controlled pore size was characterized with SEM, EDS, FT-IR, XRD and pore size measurement. The hydrogen permeability and selectivity toward nitrogen gas of the developed membrane were 0.3 x 10-6 mole/m2.s.pa and 4.1, respectively. The nanoporous hydrogen selective SiC membrane shows promising application in membrane reactor for steam reforming reacti on of natural gas, water gas shift reactions and hydrogen separation from coal gasification such as Integrated Gasification Combined Cycle (IGCC).