Integrated Membrane Shift Reactor for Simultaneous CO2 Capture and Hydrogen Production

78283S Carbon dioxide (CO2) capture and storage is one of the solutions for reducing the global CO2 emission. The current challenges for CO2 capture are to reduce costs and to develop technologies that can be applied to the energy industry, which is one of the largest CO2 emission sources. Pre-combustion capture is an attractive technology that is currently under development to capture CO2 while converting fossil fuels to hydrogen or power. This project will develop an integrated membrane and water-gas-shift reactor system that can capture CO2 and produce hydrogen simultaneously at low-cost. A proprietary dense hydrogen transport membrane will be integrated with a water-gas-shift catalyst, allowing high pressure CO2 and pure hydrogen to be obtained from their respective sides of the membrane reactor. The dense hydrogen transport membrane has shown superior hydrogen permeability and selectivity, and excellent chemical stability toward water gas shift gas mixture. Phase I project will prove the feasibility of combining the membrane reactor and the water-gas shift reactor into a single process that produces high pressure CO2 on one side and pure hydrogen on the other side of the system. Commercial Applications and other Benefits as described by the awardee: The combined water-gas-shift/membrane reactor concept should major savings in energy and reduce the costs of CO2 capture. Ancillary benefits include: high purity hydrogen for fuel cell applications, very high CO2 capture efficiency (99+%), high pressure CO2 that significantly reduces the capital costs and energy penalty for CO2 compression, and significant process simplification with lower capital expenditures for water gas-shift and CO2/hydrogen separation.