Silica membranes for hydrogen separation from coal gas. Final report

摘要

This project is a continuation of a previous DOE-UCR project (DE-FG22- 89PC89765) dealing with the preparation of silica membranes highly permselective to hydrogen at elevated temperatures, suitable for hydrogen separation from coal gas. The membranes prepared in the previous project had very high selectivity but relatively low permeance. Therefore, the general objectives of this project were to improve the permeance of these membranes and to obtain fundamental information about membrane structure and properties. The specific objectives were: (1) to explore new silylation reagents and reaction conditions with the purpose of reducing the thickness and increasing the permeance of silica membranes prepared by chemical vapor deposition (CVD), (2) to characterize the membrane structure, (3) to delineate mechanism and kinetics of deposition, (4) to measure the permeability of silica layers at different extents of deposition, and (5) to mathematically model the relationship between structure and deposition kinetics.