Coal Gas Cleaning and Purification With Inorganic Membranes

The economic viability of coal gasification could depend on the ability to clean and purify the coal gases at elevated temperatures. Inorganic membranes have the potential for being used for that purpose. Efforts have been undertaken at the Oak Ridge K-25 Site to develop membranes that would be useful for separating hydrogen from the coal gas at the high operating temperatures. This paper will give a brief review of some fundamentals of gas separation with membranes. Also, a brief discussion of the theory derived to guide the development process will be given. The theory can be used to indicate the pore size needed to achieve good separation. In addition, some experimental results that have been obtained with some of the membranes that have been fabricated will be discussed.