WPI Research Publication

FALL 2013

WPI Research is the research magazine of Worcester Polytechnic Institute. It contains news and features about graduate research in the arts and sciences, business, and engineering, along with notes about new grants, books, and faculty achievements.

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Pd A Metallic Advantage The system has proven astonishingly effective. In phase one of the DOE trials, the WPI membrane achieved an H2 purity level of 99.89 percent during the entire 200-hour test period, a level that had never been seen before with coal gas. In a paper published last year in the International Journal of Hydrogen Energy, the research team called it "a breakthrough" — not a term scientists use lightly. "There is no material in nature more efficient in separating hydrogen than palladium," says Andreas Matzakos, principal concept engineer at Shell Oil Company, which sponsored the WPI work for seven years and is now using the WPI technology to produce hydrogen for cars powered 22 > wpi.edu/+research by fuel cells. Calling the research "brilliantly executed," he added, "Moreover, it can stand the temperature found in common reactors, and it enables process intensification: the ability to do more steps in a smaller volume." Matzakos is referring to another advantage of the metallic membranes that WPI has developed. Unlike polymer membranes, which are also used for gas separation, the metal structures can sustain the high temperatures needed for coal gasification and natural gas reforming, a process for extracting hydrogen from methane. When using organic membranes, on the other hand, the gas must be cooled before it can be separated. "That's energy loss," Ma notes. "That's cost." The membrane's heat tolerance is what appeals to Praxair, the largest producer of industrial gases in the Americas and one of the largest hydrogen producers in the world, which is hoping to commercialize WPI's technology for use in hydrogen production. Raymond P. Roberge, senior vice president and chief technology officer at Praxair, says the membrane's ability to function at higher temperatures will make it much more economical than conventional technology, which requires many separate steps. "Researchers have been looking for methods to cleanly separate hydrogen from other gases at high temperature for some time with limited success," says Roberge, a 1972

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