Highly Efficient, Solid State Hydrogen Purification for Resource Recovery

Sustainable Innovations' signature electrochemical cell architecture provides a solution to NASA's search for regenerative separation technology enabling maximum hydrogen recovery from a stream containing water vapor (saturated), carbon monoxide (CO), and hydrocarbons including methane, acetylene, ethane, and ethylene, among others. Separation of hydrogen from mixed gaseous streams presents a significant technical challenge for various NASA applications. In addition, the ability to efficiently perform hydrogen purification presents an attractive economic opportunity. Sustainable Innovations is developing a technology that extracts hydrogen from a mixed stream by electro-oxidization of the hydrogen and subsequent electro-reduction of the resultant protons in a separate chamber. The process, when combined with an electrochemical cell architecture that is engineered to tolerate high differential pressure, can be used to separate and compress hydrogen in a single step. The process is proven to be efficient, quiet, and highly reliable. It requires no reciprocating compressor, so it is largely maintenance free.